Arunachal’s Rupa Bayor wins bronze at Australian open taekwondo championship

Arunachal Pradesh’s Rupa Bayor added another milestone to her growing career by winning the bronze medal at the Australian Open WT G2 International Taekwondo Championship 2025, held in Gold Coast. She secured the medal in the Female Individual Recognised Poomsae (18–30 years) category.

This marks her third consecutive podium finish at the Australian Open, underlining her consistency at the international level. Bayor advanced to the semi-finals after defeating competitors from Chinese Taipei, Australia, and the United States, before narrowly losing to Hong Kong in a close contest.

“I got to play matches with great players and gained high-level exposure and great experiences,” Bayor said in a statement after the event.

Born in Arunachal Pradesh and currently training at the Indo-Korean Taekwondo Academy in Navi Mumbai under coach Abhishek Dubey, Bayor has steadily risen to become one of India’s leading taekwondo athletes. Her journey gained attention when she won a medal at the South Asian Games, and since then, she has made history with several firsts for Indian taekwondo.

Highlights of her career include:

• Gold at the 2023 World Taekwondo President's Cup Europe in Istanbul, making her the first Indian to claim a gold medal in a WT Grade 2 Ranked Senior 1 Poomsae event.
• Bronze at the 8th Asian Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Vietnam, India’s first-ever senior-level medal in the recognised poomsae category.
• Breaking into the World Top 10 Poomsae Rankings in 2024, another first for India.

Bayor, supported by Welspun, has already been inducted into India’s Target Asian Games Group (TAGG) and is preparing for the 2026 Asian Games and the World Taekwondo Championships in Hong Kong. With her recent performance, she has further cemented her reputation as one of the country’s most reliable performers on the international stage.