The family of a 19-year-old UK taekwando champion are mourning the loss of their only daughter after she died “completely unexpectedly” in her sleep last month. <\/p>\n
Isabelle Sava suffered a cardiac arrest while sleeping and was unable to be revived despite best efforts from emergency services, the description for her GoFundMe page read. <\/p>\n
“There are simply no words for a loss like this. Nineteen years was nowhere near enough,” the page wrote. <\/p>\n
Sava was preparing to start her second year studying law at Queen Mary University of London and had ambitions of becoming a commercial lawyer, according to the page. <\/p>\n
She had also worked as an academic tutor to children for more than two years and was involved in several university law societies. <\/p>\n
Outside her studies, Sava had dedicated more than a decade to taekwando, becoming a second-degree black belt. <\/p>\n
She competed at the World Taekwando Championships in the Netherlands in 2022, where she won a silver medal in sparring. <\/p>\n
Sava was also involved in umpiring at taekwando competitions, and was a “trusted and valued member of the taekwondo community, giving her time and experience back to a sport that had been such an important part of her life”. <\/p>\n
In a post shared to social media, the UK International Taekwando Federation also paid tribute to Sava, describing her as “a pleasure to teach, train alongside, and know”. <\/p>\n
“She will be sorely missed by everyone who had the privilege of meeting her across the Taekwon-Do community,” the post said. <\/p>\n
“Our deepest thoughts, love, and prayers are with her family and friends during this heart-breaking time.”<\/p>\n
Sava was the only daughter to parents Laura and Ovi, with the fundraiser page describing the trio as an “incredibly close family-of-three”. <\/p>\n
“They expected to see her build her career, create her own life and experience all the milestones that should have been waiting for her.<\/p>\n
“Instead, without warning, their entire world changed.<\/p>\n
Th GoFundMe had been established by a friend of the family to help Sava’s parents with funeral and memorial expenses, as well as other costs following her sudden death. <\/p>\n
It had received more than 300 donations, raising more than \u00a314,000 (NZ$32,000) since it was launched.<\/p>\n
“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for every donation, every share, every message and every act of kindness shown to this family,” the page concluded. <\/p>\n
“Rest peacefully, beautiful Isabelle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of a 19-year-old UK taekwando champion are mourning the loss of their only daughter after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213,1745],"class_list":["post-586565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}