On December 4, 2019, when taekwondoin Kajal Shrestha won gold in the 13th South Asian Games, she couldn’t fight back her tears. Once the time was up and Shrestha was leading 50-14 against the Pakistani athlete, she took off her helmet and let out a loud shriek. The crowd erupted. Shrestha hugged her coach, took the Nepali flag and went running around the mat at the hall of the Nepal Taekwondo Academy in Satdobato, Lalitpur. Then she cried.

Shrestha had her hardships—from being a rebel at home to starting taekwondo to becoming the best taekwondo fighter in South Asia in the -46kg category. From securing her first gold at the 2nd NECOS National Taekwondo Championship in 2013 to her last gold at the 9th National Games in 2022, Shrestha made podium finishes in around three dozen national and international tournaments. Of them, around two dozen were gold medals.

There could have been more. But years of competition took a toll on Shrestha’s body, forcing the promising fighter to retire after the 2023 World Taekwondo Championships in Azerbaijan. Rather than walking away from the sport, however, she chose to remain on the mat in different roles—as a referee and coach. And in just a few years, she has begun carving out a second career marked by milestones as significant as the ones she achieved as an athlete.

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Until that win in 2019, Shrestha had remained largely in the shadows. When her story reached a wider, unfamiliar mass, it found a receptive audience.

Deepak Thapa, a columnist for the Post who usually writes on social and political issues, had to go out of his comfort zone and write on sports when he came across Shrestha’s story.

“It was the report of a plaintive wail from Kajal Shrestha after winning gold in taekwondo that spurred me to write this piece,” Thapa wrote.

Speaking after the SAG gold, Shrestha had cracked open a window into her life. “We are not rich. We are poor,” she had said. “My father has been struggling in the Gulf for the sake of our family. That’s why I remember him so vividly now.”

Shrestha comes from a middle-class family. Her parents came to Kathmandu from Sindhupalchok decades ago. She is the youngest of the family; she has an elder brother and sister.

South Asian gold was her big dream. And when she achieved it at the age of 22 in 2019, she decided to dream of something bigger.

“As I was celebrating my South Asian gold, I started dreaming of winning medals at the Asian Games, World Championship and Olympics,” Shrestha told the Post recently. “I then won gold at the 9th National Games in 2022.”

However, she hit a wall in 2023. Her trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the World Taekwondo Championships turned out to be her last as a fighter. Years of punching and kicking had worn Shrestha out. She had begun to feel pain in her hands, ankles, knees. She decided to hang up her gloves.

“I felt that I could not continue fighting as my body was at its limit,” Shrestha remembers. “And it was the end of my fighting career—and of my dreams of bagging medals at the Asian and the world stage.”

It was not easy for Shrestha to leave taekwondo even when her fighting days were over. “So, I decided to continue through other roles,” Shrestha told the Post as she sat behind an office table facing the entrance of the Gongabu Taekwondo Dojang in Kathmandu on Wednesday afternoon.

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A small makeshift hall on the ground floor, its door opening to a small alley. New mats. Few, but all required basic equipment—two kick bags, sufficient cones and kick pads. It is the Gongabu Taekwondo Dojang where Shrestha, Nepal’s youngest international referee, currently spends her evenings as a coach.

Shrestha has recently partnered with Saroj Tamang, a fifth-dan black belt, for the dojang, a Korean word for a training hall.

Every day, Shrestha rides her scooter for around 20 kilometres from her house near Jagati, Bhaktapur. The journey takes her along the dusty and muddy Suryabinayak–Dhulikhel road section, currently under expansion, before she navigates Kathmandu’s crowded streets to reach the training hall.

Yet, when she walks into the dojang at around 3pm, there is little sign of fatigue. After crossing construction zones and chaotic traffic, Shrestha arrives in her usual self—calm, energetic and smiling. Ready to coach.

A six-year-old boy was running around the modest hall, unable to hide his excitement when Shrestha arrived on Wednesday.

The child’s father was inquiring about the class with Tamang. Shrestha, meanwhile, watched the boy with quiet delight as he repeatedly struck the kick bag and pads.

“He joined this morning,” she says, before guiding the wide-eyed new recruit through a few basic kicking techniques. She asks him to return the next day at 6am.

When it is time for her pupils to arrive, her eyes are glued to the entrance. And her eyes seem to brighten with every trainee stepping into the hall.

Fathers pull up on two-wheelers, dropping their children at the entrance before rushing back. Mothers arrive on foot and do not leave until the training formally begins.

“At what time will the training finish?” the mothers ask. “They will not get seriously injured, right?”

Shrestha replies to all of them courteously. “You can come at 6pm. No, they will be absolutely fine. We will only make them go through basic drills.”

These things, Shrestha says, make her remember her past.

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A brilliant student, Shrestha was in grade eight at Koteshwor Saraswati Higher Secondary School when she learned about taekwondo. Some of her friends were joining the classes, and she wanted to tag along. “But when I asked my mother, she declined,” Shrestha recalls.

Shrestha, however, was not someone to let it go so easily.

Shrestha staged an act with friends to win her mother over. When it failed, she cried. Staged a hunger strike. And with some supportive words from her brother, Shrestha’s mother finally, though not wholeheartedly, allowed her to start kicking at the Koteshwor Taekwondo Dojang.

“I remember getting beaten to a pulp during my first fight,” Shrestha recalls with a laugh. “That day, I came home crying. But since it was something I wanted, I went back, trained harder and got stronger.”

And she did not let herself down.

In 2014, she was in Taiwan, China, representing Nepal at the World Junior Taekwondo Championships. The way she was progressing, it was as if taekwondo chose Shrestha. Over the years, she fulfilled her dream of South Asian gold but failed to take part in bigger platforms.

Now she believes she can cherish the dreams of the Asian Games and the Olympics as a referee and a coach. In fact, she has already made great strides as an international, World Taekwondo-certified referee. She is also finding her rhythm as a coach.

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Shrestha became a national-level referee in 2018. In December 2023, at an international referee seminar in Korea, she passed the test and became an international referee.

At age 26, Shrestha became the youngest international referee from Nepal. By 2025, Shrestha had become the first Nepali to become an international referee in taekwondo categories hanmadang, kyorugi and poomsae.

Shrestha was adjudged the best referee at the 2025 Kukkiwon World Taekwondo Hanmadang in California, USA, in July. She was also awarded the best referee in the Oceania Taekwondo Championship in Sydney, Australia, in March.

Just last month, she was also called as a referee in the 2026 World Taekwondo Junior Championships in Uzbekistan.

“Refereeing in the World Junior Championships was a nostalgic moment for me,” Shrestha shared. “I once participated in this tournament as a teenager in 2014. Now, I am here as a referee. Time flies.”

If things go well, Shrestha could be seen refereeing at the Asian Games and the Olympics soon. She said she did great at the World Taekwondo International Referee Selection and Training Camp in Kazakhstan in January.

The camp serves as a pathway to selecting referees for the Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles in 2028.

Shrestha believes refereeing has taught her something different.

“As a fighter, you should be aggressive,” she said. “But as a referee, you should be calm. You do not want to make mistakes and become a villain in someone’s story.”

It is Shrestha’s love for taekwondo that she is enjoying other roles than a fighter. “If I can make it through to the Olympics as a referee, it would be a big personal achievement,” she said. “It would be better if I could make it through as a coach too.”

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Shrestha worked as a trainer for the first time many years ago.

By the time she completed her school-leaving exams, Shrestha and her family were living in Bhaktapur. “As soon as I completed grade 10, I started asking schools in the neighbourhood to hire me as a taekwondo trainer,” she said. “I did it to earn some money so that I can cover my transportation to the dojang in Koteshwor. I did not want to ask my mother for every little thing. I remember getting paid Rs2,000 a month at a school to teach taekwondo.”

In 2016, Shrestha was associated with the Tribhuvan Army Club. “I used to earn Rs20,000 to Rs25,000 there,” she said. “It was a big relief.”

And when she started training in the national team after becoming a dominant fighter in her category, she got better and better.

“I could not keep utilising my skills as a fighter as I had to stop halfway,” she said. “But I want to share my knowledge with the new generation. I want them to become world champions and raise Nepal’s flag throughout the globe.”

And Shrestha has the ability to produce new taekwondo stars. She recently proved it.

Shrestha had been working as the team coach of Bagmati Province for some time. And her team clinched the third position at the 1st Jhapa National Taekwondo Kyorugi & Poomsae Championship on May 8 and 9.

“Taekwondo has its charm in the world,” Shrestha said as she got busy with her students on Wednesday, a day before she went to Jhapa for the tournament. “It is respected and practised everywhere.”

It is not just children that Shrestha and Tamang train at their dojang.

They train teenagers from 6pm to 7pm. There are also teenagers in morning classes. Shrestha reported that many parents want their children to practice taekwondo because they believe the sport teaches them discipline. The sport can also be a viable profession, Shrestha argues.

“There are many career opportunities and huge benefits in this sport,” she says. “I want to help as many taekwondoins as possible to realise it.”