Michelle Tau – from Miss Lesotho to Olympic star: “Everything is possible”
From being crowned Miss Lesotho to becoming the first taekwondo athlete from her nation to qualify for the Olympics in 20 years, Michelle Tau has many different sides to her character.
“I'm a very soft person. I'm very shy. But when I get in the ring, it’s like beast mode,” she says in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com.
“I switch when I go into taekwondo. And then when I come out of it, I'm soft again. I feel like we have a lot of personalities, we are different beings, and we just need to explore who we are.”
At the 2024 African Qualifying tournament in Dakar, Tau earned a quota in the women’s -49 kg [flyweight] for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and is confident that she can become the first athlete from the Mosotho ethnic group to reach the Olympic podium.
“It's something that’s never done, but I'm challenging myself to do this, and I'm dedicated, and I'm determined to do my best.”
Michelle Tau: From the catwalk to fighting on the tatami
Tau is from a family of taekwondo practitioners and grew around a tatami. Her father, John Molise Tau, a national taekwondo legend, passed away when she was young, but she grew up admiring his medals.
“My mum was in the national team along with my dad,” she told Olympics.com from her training base in Alcobendas, just outside the Spanish capital Madrid.
“My dad, he’s like a hero in the country because he's been to the African Games championships. He has a World Military Games medal.”
This lineage naturally drew a young Tau towards the sport too. She loved the physicality of the sport, which was the polar opposite of her other passion, modelling. In 2017, she became the face of Lesotho, going as far as finishing among the top three in an international pageant.
“The fact that I was into modelling and then into taekwondo, it was confusing for a lot of people. It still is,” she admitted.
“Back then, as a girl going into taekwondo, a lot of people would just be like, ‘this is not a girl’s sport. This is like for boys. Do you want to be a boy? What are you trying to do?'
“They say to me, ‘you look like a girl! When you are in modelling you have makeup, your hair is done, you are in heels, you are walking, you look soft, very soft, very poised, very composed’. Then here I am, they see me also in taekwondo, they are like, ‘you fight, you are strong, how do you balance the two?’”
That’s the bit she really wants to be defined by.
“When I get in the ring, I'm a different person than I am in my real life.”
“I am very feminine, but I'm also very strong. It's like women can also be strong. Women can also do tough things, and women can also fight.”- Michelle Tau to Olympics.com
The making of Lesotho’s top taekwondo star
Tau exhibited extraordinary early athletic ability on the tatami, dominating local and regional events in the women’s -49 kg.
“I was winning, so I used to think, ‘Oh, I'm at my peak level’. And then I went international,” she said, her eyes widening, in an expression of bewilderment.
“Then I realised I am far behind… Internationally, it was like really hard. I couldn't do the three rounds. It was like my conditioning, everything just wasn’t there.”
“She was already a conditioned athlete," coach Hugo Tortosa, who began working with Tau in 2023 and urged her to consider his home country Spain as a training base, said.
“The problem was that she didn’t have a coach or have a good place to train, she was moving to different places to train.”
“For the first time I was with a coach, I was in a stable, training environment, and he made it easier,” added Tau.
Alcobendas-based Tortosa also took up the sport after his taekwondo master father, world silver medallist Jesus Tortotsa Alameda, and brother, Olympian and world youth champion Jesus Cabrera Tortosa.
Michelle Tau: ‘I want to be the first to actually bring a medal to my country'
Tau left Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, renowned for its breathtaking mountain ranges as a dreamer, and is set to return home as an Olympian.
The two-time world championships contender's path to the Olympics became clear at the 2024 African Qualifying event in Dakar, where she earned silver, one of the four continental medals she has won in her career.
“When I went to bed after qualifying, I was in shock. I always felt like I'm going to wake up, and it's going to be like a dream. Until I was like it's real, it’s happening,” she told Olympics.com from the taekwondo gym in Alcobendas.
“Just to go to the Olympics and just to be on that mat means that everything is possible. It means that I'm just a girl from Africa, I'm from Lesotho, and today I would be on the mat of the Olympics, not everyone can achieve that.”
Lesotho’s highlands have made the country a hub for long distance runners, who also make up the bulk of the nation's Olympic athletes.
Tau is set to become one of four Basotho taekwondo athletes to fight at the Games and only the third woman to qualify. Interestingly, they have all qualified in the same weight category, the flyweight.
Likeleli Alinah Thamae trailblazed the path, qualifying for Sydney 2000. But since Lineo Mochesane at Athens 2004, no female taekwondo athlete from the Southern African country has made it to the Games.
In Paris, Lesotho, which has no Olympic medal to its name, will be represented by three athletes.
“This makes me feel very special. The fact that I'm one of the few that will be at the Olympics for my country, because we have never had, like ten people going to the Olympics or qualifying for the Olympics in my country. It's always, just like one person, two people. And it has been mostly in athletics.”
Everything in Tau's taekwondo life is the result of a girl determined to finish her parents’ and coach's sporting journeys.
“One of the things that motivates me a lot, is when people reach out to me, to tell me how much I've changed their lives, how much they look up to me,” she said.
“That is why I want to be the first to actually bring a medal to my country because I'm challenging myself.”
“Well, for me, it's like a dream too,” added Tortosa.
“Going to the Olympics is a dream that you have when you are an athlete and a dream that you have when you are a coach.
“Michelle, as most African athletes, are reaching for these medals at the Olympics, because they deserve it. They start training in not good conditions, not good facilities, and they have the [will] to make it.”