In the first round of the competition she took a blow to the hand from world number one, Brazilian Natalia Falavinga, which was so powerful that, despite wearing protective gloves, it broke her hand in two places.
"My hand spasmed a little bit and felt weird - a bit like when you stub your toe," she remembers.
"You tend to get kicked a lot in the fingers in this sport so when it happened I didn't really think it was that serious. I still had another two rounds to go so I carried on and thought, `I'm going to have fat fingers for a bit after this'."
However, when Sarah removed her glove after the fight it soon became clear that this was more serious than previous knocks.
"My hand looked a bit deformed - like a pig's trotter," she says. "The physio said that she thought it might be broken because it didn't look normal. I went to the hospital for an X-Ray and it clearly showed a break in two places."
Sarah, who lives near Manchester's Sportcity had broken two metacarpal bones in her left hand. It was an unusual break and the first time in 17 years of fighting she'd broken her hand. Prior to this, her most serious injury had come in 2003 when a blow to the knee meant she needed ligament reconstruction. That surgery put her out of the sport for nine months, dashing her chances at the Athens Olympics because she was unable to prepare as thoroughly as she'd hoped.
Now, with her focus on next month's Olympic qualifiers at the MEN Arena, Sarah was determined that injury wasn't going to spoil her medal hopes again. And, realising the severity of her injury, she flew home the following day to get specialist advice from consultant orthopaedic hand surgeon, Mike Hayton.
Mr Hayton, who operated on Sarah at BMI The Alexandra Hospital in Cheshire, works exclusively on hand, wrist and elbow surgery, dealing with many professional sports hand injuries. He explains: "Sarah came to me three days after she'd broken her hand and it was still very swollen.
"A single break is fairly common but to break two fingers is uncommon. The degree of the bend was also very uncommon in Sarah's case - the angle of the breaks was about 80 degrees and having broken two bones there was far more swelling and displacement than normal."
With this in mind the decision was taken to operate the next day, fixing the breaks with a minimally invasive procedure called percuraneos intramedullary wiring.
This involved feeding wires under X-ray control through small incisions in the hand, then directing them along the marrow canal of the bones. This allows the bones to stabilise while the natural healing process occurs.
"This is a modern technique that we have been using for a few years," he adds. "There is much less scarring using this method than more traditional methods of using a plate and screws to hold the bones in place.
"Sarah now has two scars of 2mm as opposed to one of 10cm. There was also a reduced risk, by operating this way, of the tendons sticking down to the bone, which could reduce future movement of the hand."
The bone was held in place with the two wires and thermoplastic splint moulds around the hand.
The wires came out after four weeks and the splints came off after six. Sarah then began working with a physiotherapist to rebuild the strength and movement in her hand. "It's still really weak because I've not used it for so long," Sarah says. "For instance, I can't fully bend my wrist back yet or do press ups.
"I've been lucky with this injury because I could still do a lot of my training. I just couldn't have any contact. I have been able to have contact in the last couple of weeks. It was a bit painful the first couple of times my hand was hit, but it doesn't bother me now."
Sarah, who was the first British woman to compete in taekwondo at Olympic level when she was just 17, is now training five hours a day in preparation for the Olympic qualifiers next month.
"Now I'm back in full training I don't think about getting hurt," she adds.
"We wear protective body armour, a head guard and hand pads, but, as you can see, it can't completely protect you.
"You always get little knocks and bruises in this sport but it's all part of it. You just do it."
Next month Manchester is hosting the World Taekwondo Qualification Tournament for next year's Beijing Olympic Games. The tournament, at the M.E.N. Arena from September 28 to 30, will see 728 athletes competing from at least 182 member nations. It will be the largest taekwondo event held in the UK , with athletes competing for 32 places at Beijing.
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