Stevenson says she is 95% fit after two ankle operations

Olympic medallist Sarah Stevenson returns to international competition in the World Cup Taekwondo Team Championships in Azerbaijan this week.

Stevenson, from Doncaster, has undergone two operations on her right ankle since coming home from Beijing.

She hit the headlines after the result of her first-round bout against home favourite Zhong Chen was overturned, and went on to take a bronze medal.

"I feel about 95% fit but I just wanted to get back in action," she said.

"It's been an incredibly frustrating time since Beijing and to come back in a team event will help as it makes it that bit more fun."

Stevenson will be joined by a reduced GB squad, with Caroline Fisher and Sophie Threlfall making up the women's team

Craig Brown, Davoud Etmanani, Joel Jackson and Martin Stamper will be competing for the men.

Performance director Gary Hall said: "Although the rules allow us to send five men and five women we have deliberately chosen to send reduced squads.

"We are viewing these championships as an ideal opportunity to give the athletes good competitive experience rather than fighting for medals."

"I came home and was a bit disillusioned with the sport for a while" Sarah Stevenson

The highlights of the season for the GB squad are the British Open in Manchester in August, followed by the World Championships in October.

Stevenson is still unhappy over the events in Beijing, when she had to win an unprecedented appeal to progress after the judges initially failed to score a blatant winning head shot with 10 seconds on the clock.

"I know if I'd beaten the Chinese girl fair and square the first time round it would have been different," said Stevenson.

"It completely knocked my focus and didn't give me time to prepare for my next contest.

"I came home and was a bit disillusioned with the sport for a while, especially because of my injury as well.

"But now I'm just looking forward to being back and London 2012 is a great goal to work towards."

A new scoring system, using electronic sensors located in body and head guards, is due to be used in Baku.

Stevenson added: "Anything that stops the sort of thing that happened in Beijing has to be a good thing.

"A couple of these systems have been tried before but this one seems the most promising so I hope it'll be OK."

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