Kicking the ref was a great example of good sportsmanship and self control and all those other tenets of TKD (courtesy, humility, integrity... if memory serves)
Sadly, Olympic sparring shows almost no relationship to actual fighting or self-defense... the rules make it so that punches and hand techniques are so hard to score with that they don't even bother trying. Since they have hogu's on, they don't bother blocking and protecting their body either. It's all about head-kicks which score more points (and appear to be neither effective - referee stood there and was fine - nor useful in any real-life scenario that I can think of
).
Before I left TKD for other martial arts, I used to "joke" that I'd be fine defending myself if I were attacked - as long as the mugger followed Olympic TKD sparring rules
