It was a fitting end to Vanja Stanković’s school days: On June 26 in 2017, the 19-year-old Serbian won the gold medal in the female under 49 kilograms category in Muju. But it was not something she had anticipated before she flew out to South Korea. "I did not expect to get to finals I just wanted to show my best and believe in myself and see what will happen," she said in an interview the day following her victory.

That victory adds yet another honour to the increasingly crowded medal wall at her dojang, Belgrade’s famous Galeb - which means "Seagull" in English - Taekwondo Club. Under head coach Dragan Jovic, the club has produced two Olympic medals - London 2012 gold medallist Milica Mandic’s and Rio 2016 silver medallist Tijana Bogdanovic’s Rio silver - and now a World Championship title, Serbia’s first-ever. 

"Galeb is really the most successful club in Europe," Stanković, already a gold medallist at the European Under-21 Championships in Bulgaria and the Belgian Open before Muju, said. "We have good coaches good system of training, we train so hard every day, twice a day." 

Galeb is not just about training, Stanković claimed. It is also about camaraderie. "In our club we are like a big family, everybody loves and supports each other, and everybody wants to come to the club," she said.

If teamwork is one reason for Stanković’s success, another is her apprenticeship in the sport from an early. "I started when I was maybe eight-years-old, my friend started it and she liked it and asked me to go with her," she recalled. "It was a game and I liked it – and now, nine years later, I am here."

Another reason is self-belief. "We always believe in ourselves and in our club and in our country," Stanković said. "From the start, my coach Uroš Todorović was helping with my mental strength: He made me believe in myself.

"Before Milica’s gold in London, nobody knew taekwondo, they would say, ‘Is it fighting with sticks?' But after two Olympic medals – especially Milica’s in London – there was a boom for taekwondo in Serbia and now it is one of the most famous sports. Everyone knows Milica and Tijana and Dragan.”

Having finished school, Stanković now plans to study economics at university but will continue competing in taekwondo. "I want to see how high I can go," she said.

As a fighter, the Serb’s core assets are speed, power and aggression. "I am not very tall, you know, so I try to be the fastest I can be – I try to surprise my opponent with speed," Stanković said.

And speed generates power. "I am not going for the KO, but I practice strong and fact and explosive," she said. "I always try to do my best – best speed! Strongest! That is what you see in the fight!"

In technical terms, Stanković boasts clean and powerful technique; in fact, the high roundhouse kicks she unleashed in Muju could be taken from the pages of a taekwondo textbook.

With the new rules coming in, her preparations for the 2017 World Championships were strenuous, with heavy priority on conditioning. "It is physically harder now, you need to push each other," Stanković, who focussed on a long process of weight training and leg strengthening, said. "I think for me, the new rules are better; the new style is more aggressive - more fight! - and more interesting for the watchers."

Though Stanković insists that she still enjoys both the training and the fighting of the sport, her final in Muju presented a stern test: She found herself taking on the defending world champion and Rio 2016 bronze medalist, Thailand's Panipak Wongpattanakit. Besides her experience, Wongpattanakit also boasted a height and leg-length advantage.

"The plan was to attack and don’t give her the chance to make contact," Stanković said of her game plan. "The plan was to break her fight, break her position, to move her and when she raised her leg, I would kick.

"Before a fight I sit quietly and I visualise the match: I see myself fast and strong and kicking the opponent in the head and body and the match is mine. I try to imagine…"

In the final, first blood went to Stanković in convincing style. She landed a picture-perfect round kick to Wongpattanakit’s head for three points – before being forced off the mats by the Thai’s counter-charge for a one-point penalty. The first round ended 3-1 to Stanković. 

In round two, Wongpattanakit  stabbed forward with her long front leg, but not connecting. She dominated the centre of the mats and forced Stanković out of the area for another penalty point, 2-3, which is how the round ended.

In the third round, the reigning champion had to score, but as she attacked forward, she went down, taking the board to 4-2 in Stanković’s favour. Then, as the Serb lunged in for a punch attack, Wongpattanakit landed her hook kick to the head but fell, meaning her points were deducted for holding. The Thai coach appealed against the decision but was overruled, leaving Stanković 5-2 ahead.

The board now read 5-2 to the Serb. The Thai won back two points with a body kick, but Stanković landed another wicked roundhouse to the head that dropped Wongpattanakit. "I did not think about kicking," Stanković said. "I just did what comes."

The score was 9-4, then 9-5. With 30 seconds remaining, Wongpattanakit tried  to score to the head only for her effort to backfire when she tumbled. The score was 10-5 – and that was it. Stanković was Serbia's first-ever world champion.

"I could not speak, I could not move, I just started yelling," said. "I could not see anything or hear anything, I just thought, 'I did it! I did it!’' Many, many times earlier I had tried to imagine that moment - how it would feel. It was the most amazing feeling, ever. “

A day later, when the dust had settled, Stanković was able to look back upon about her taekwondo journey so far. The key learning, she claimed, is self-belief.

Taekwondo markets itself as being about self-defence, self-confidence and self-belief but Stanković was never 100 per cent certain about the latter. She is now. "I always told myself that hard work pays off," she said. "I was not sure – but now, I am down with that: It does."