Author: admin

Every Asian Games has produced young risers and shooting stars who made their mark in the world’s sporting scene, and the 19th Hangzhou Asiad was no exception.

Many of South Korea’s fresh new stars proved their stalwart presence in their respective sports and are set to shake up the world order at the upcoming Paris Olympics next year.

Triple gold medalist archer Lim Si-hyeon was the biggest breakout star at the Hangzhou Asian Games, becoming the first archer who won more than two gold medals at a single Asiad since 1986.

At her maiden Asian Games, the 20-year old archer started her gold medal hunt in the mixed doubles event, teaming up with Lee Woo-seok, who also won another gold in the men’s team archery.

Then, she took her second gold in the women’s team event and the third in the individual event, where she defeated An San, reigning Olympic champion.

The final of the women’s recurve team event was the highlight of her outstanding composure and calmness, proving she is not just an athlete who happened to be making her Asiad debut but one who could have another successful competition ahead at Paris 2024.

Swimming phenom Kim Woo-min also stood out at the Hangzhou Asian Games, claiming a total of four medals in four freestyle events, including three golds in the men’s freestyle events.

He became only the third swimmer from the country to win three titles at a single Asiad, joining Choi Yun-hui and Park Tae-hwan.

In particular, he was a key member of South Korea’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay team, which made history by winning the country’s first-ever Asiad relay title.

His teammate Hwang Sun-woo, who already made a splash in the world championships earlier this year, also made his presence strongly felt in the pool at his Asian Games debut. He grabbed six medals, including two golds from the men’s 200m freestyle and 4x200m relay, reaching the podium in every race he entered.

Hwang’s six medals are the second most in a single meet in South Korean swimming history, behind Olympic gold medalist Park Tae-hwan

Hwang excelled with his time records. In 200m freestyle, he clocked in 1:44.40, breaking his own national record and also the 13-year-old Asian Games record.

In the 4x200m relay, Hwang anchored the South Korean team to the historic gold with a new Asian record of 7:01.73.

The two young swimmers will start their journey to the Paris Olympics with the upcoming world championships in February.

In badminton, reigning world champ and world No. 1 An Se-young finally shined at the top of the podium at a multisport competition, presenting her world-class performance in the women’s team and singles events to become a double gold medalist in Hangzhou.

Five years ago, then teenager An competed in two events at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, and left the competition empty-handed.

After reaching the quarterfinals at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago, An rose to a top class player on the world stage, claiming the world championship title earlier this year.

She is the first South Korean female badminton player to win the women’s singles title at an Asiad since legendary Bang Soo-hyun did so in 1994.

The 21-year-old has now emerged as a strong gold medal favorite at the Paris Games next year.

Star fencer Oh Sang-uk also captured two titles in the men’s sabre competition, solidifying the country’s dominance on the piste.

He won the all-Korean duel with compatriot Gu Bon-gil and frustrated Gu’s hunt for his sixth and seventh career Asiad gold in Hangzhou.

Female veteran fencer Choi In-jeong also won two gold medals in the women’s individual and team epee fencing competition, celebrating her last Asian Games finale with multiple golds. She said she will retire from the national fencing team after Hangzhou.

Pentathlete Jun Woong-tae was South Korea’s first double gold medalist, making a dramatic come-from-behind victory in the men’s individual modern pentathlon and helping the country win the team event.

The trio of Kwak Yong-bin, Ha Kwang-chul and Jeong You-jin claimed two team golds in the men’s 10m running target and the men’s 10m running target mixed run events. Their gold medals are the country’s only golds won in shooting.

At the same time, some athletes competing in new-generation sports such as esports and breaking came into the spotlight.

South Korea won the inaugural title of the League of Legends (LOL) competition, with some professional gamers, like Lee Sang-hyeok, or Faker, becoming gold medalists.

In the Street Fighter V video game competition, 44-year old gamer Kim Gwan-woo also became the first Asiad champion.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

Marking its return to international multisport competition after a five-year absence, North Korea dominated in weightlifting at the 19th Asian Games in China.

Athletes and officials from the reclusive regime also generated headlines away from the field of play in and around Hangzhou.

North Korea had been absent from the past two major international sports competitions. It skipped the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021, citing COVID-19 concerns. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) subsequently banned North Korea from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, saying the country failed to fulfill its duties and obligations as an IOC member state.

The ban was lifted at the end of 2022. And because the 19th Asian Games were postponed by a year because of lingering COVID-19 issues, North Korea was eligible to participate in the continental event this fall.

North Korea finished in 10th place in the medal table with 11 golds, 18 silvers and 10 bronzes.

At the previous Asian Games in 2018, North Korea also ranked 10th, but with 12 golds, 12 silvers and 13 bronzes.

Considering that most North Korean athletes had not been competing internationally for the past couple of years leading up to Hangzhou, their performances across the board come as a surprise.

North Korea led all countries with six gold medals and 13 medals overall in weightlifting. Three weightlifters — Ri Song-gum in the women’s 49kg, Kang Hyon-gyong in the women’s 55kg and Kim Il-gyong in the women’s 59kg — set world records, too.

Pang Chol-mi, one of North Korea’s two flag bearers at the opening ceremony, grabbed her country’s only gold medal in boxing. North Korea’s first gold medal came from shooting, where the trio of Ri Ji-hye, Paek Ok-sim and Pang Myong-hyang won the women’s 10m running target team title.

Their gold was followed moments later by artistic gymnast An Chang-ok, who soared to the women’s vault title.

A few South Korea vs. North Korea showdowns materialized at this Asiad, including twice in women’s basketball.

The two Koreas had assembled a joint team in women’s basketball to win the silver medal behind China in 2018. A handful of members from the unified team — Park Ji-su, Park Ji-hyun and Kang Lee-seul for the South, and Ro Suk-yong and Kim Hye-yon for the North — competed against each other in Hangzhou. Jong Song-sim, the North Korean assistant coach for the unified team in 2018, returned as head coach of her native country this time.

The two teams first met during the preliminary round and then again in the bronze medal game. South Korea prevailed both times. After the first game, South Korean players said they felt hurt and disappointed that North Korean players didn’t acknowledge them.

Elsewhere, North Korea knocked off South Korea in the quarterfinals of women’s football with a 4-1 victory.

There were other instances in different sports where North Korean athletes refuse to shake hands with their South Korean opponents after events.

Athletes from the North also gave South Korean and other international media the cold shoulder, even after winning medals. They often skipped official press conferences arranged for medalists and walked through mixed zones without stopping to answer questions.

The lone exception was in weightlifting, where North Korean medalists attended press conferences and answered questions from South Korean media, though they at times needed interpretation help for the ones asked with particular South Korean phrases or expressions.

The most controversial moment for North Korea came in the men’s football tournament. After losing to Japan in the quarterfinals, North Korean players, aggrieved over a late penalty awarded to their opponents, confronted and attacked referee Rustam Lutfullin after the final whistle.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

Over the first five days of the medal race at the 19th Asian Games in China, South Korea picked up 24 gold medals, winning five golds each on four of those five days.

The country was not able to sustain that momentum, however, as it collected 18 more gold medals over the final 10 days of the competition in and around the main host city of Hangzhou. A third of those 18 came on Saturday, the penultimate day of the Asiad, as South Korea finished with 42 golds, 59 silvers and 89 bronzes.

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC) had set out to bring home 45 to 50 gold medals and finish in third place behind the two Asian sporting giants, China and Japan. South Korea finished second in the medal tables at every Asiad from 1998 to 2014, and that streak was snapped in 2018, when Japan finished in second place with 75 gold medals, 26 more than South Korea.

The KSOC acknowledged it would be difficult to topple Japan this time and the more realistic goal would be to narrow the gap with the rival nation.

At least that part of the equation was a success, as Japan finished with 52 gold medals. South Korea did win more medals overall than Japan, 190 to 188.

South Korea’s early gold medals mostly came from two sports: fencing and taekwondo.

The nation’s very first gold medal was won in taekwondo’s poomsae, and South Korea ended up winning five gold medals in its traditional martial art.

South Korea led all countries with six gold medals in fencing, which also produced a pair of double gold medalists: Choi In-jeong in the women’s individual and team epee, and Oh Sang-uk in the men’s individual and team sabre.

South Korea collected six gold medals and 22 medals overall in swimming, both of them its record totals in the sport at a single Asiad. Rising star Kim Woo-min accounted for half of those six gold medals, as the champion in the men’s 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay. Hwang Sun-woo joined Kim for the relay title and won the 200m freestyle gold medal for himself.

Fencing, taekwondo and swimming all wrapped up in the first week of the medal competition. Archery, as expected, did some heavy lifting for South Korea in the latter part of the Asian Games.

South Korea, the preeminent archery power, gobbled up four out of five gold medals up for grabs in archery — in the mixed team, men’s and women’s team, and women’s individual.

Finals for team sports were all scheduled over the final days of the Asian Games, and South Korea collected some notable gold medals in that stretch.

Football and baseball, two of the most popular sports in South Korea, both produced gold medals in Hangzhou. South Korea won its third consecutive gold in men’s football, and fourth consecutive title in baseball — both of them Asian Games records.

South Korea produced several multiple gold medalists, including freestyle swimmer Kim Woo-min and archer Lim Si-hyeon, who each won three gold medals. Badminton star An Se-young, world No. 1 in women’s singles, captured the women’s singles and the women’s team titles.

On the other side of the ledger, South Korea faltered early in men’s and women’s volleyball, not coming close to the podium.

The men’s volleyball team, in particular, was knocked out of medal contention even before the opening ceremony, after losing a qualifying match for the knockout stage. South Korea missed out on a medal in men’s volleyball for the first time in 61 years.

The women’s volleyball program has been on a downslope since the international retirement of the transcendent star Kim Yeon-koung, and the trend continued in Hangzhou as the team finished in fifth place. South Korea missed out on an Asiad medal in women’s volleyball for only the second time.

Elsewhere, South Korea was shut out of gold medals in wrestling for the first time in 13 years. For the second straight Asian Games, South Korea was held to one medal in boxing — after winning six in 2014.

At a wrap-up press conference for the South Korean delegation on Sunday, KSOC President Lee Kee-heung said he would seek to devise long-term plans for elite sports in South Korea to adopt more advanced training systems and learn from examples in other nations.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

South Korean Kim Hyo-joo has gone wire-to-wire to capture her sixth career LPGA title in Texas.

Kim cruised to a four-stroke victory at the Ascendant LPGA at Old American Golf Club in The Colony, Texas, on Sunday (local time). She shot a final round of two-under 69 to finish at 13-under 271, with Bianca Pagdanganan and Atthaya Thitikul tying for second at nine-under.

Kim, who had four birdies and two bogeys Sunday, is the second straight South Korean winner on the tour, following the rookie Ryu Hae-ran, who earned her maiden victory in Arkansas last week.

This is Kim’s first title since April 2022. She had a pair of runner-up finishes this year before the breakthrough in Texas.

Kim entered this tournament leading the tour in scoring average at 69.79 strokes per round and also in greens in regulation at 74.37 percent. No player had played more rounds under par than Kim’s 46 prior to this tournament.

She submitted four more under-par rounds at Old American Golf Club.

Kim’s was the fourth win by a South Korean player this year, which matches last year’s total with six tournaments remaining.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

With the top men’s football tournament in Asia under 100 days away, South Korea head coach Jurgen Klinsmann says he has “a pretty good idea” of what his roster will look like. And it won’t be just technical skills that will help South Korea end their 63-year drought at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup when it kicks off in January in Qatar.

“For us as coaches, going on three months prior to the tournament, it’s important we start finding certain things, not just the technical side. We need to create a group of characters and individuals that form a very hungry team to win the Asian Cup,” Klinsmann said in a YouTube press conference with South Korean media Monday, with a few select writers attending in person.

“We also need to build chemistry, so that players talk to each other and develop drive and hunger so that we can go into Qatar and we can make it happen,” Klinsmann added. “That’s why it’s important now to become more consistent. Leaders of this team like (captain Son Heung-min), they form this group to get them focused and develop that chemistry and hunger to win it.”

Klinsmann met with the media virtually four days before South Korea host Tunisia in a friendly match in Seoul. They will then play Vietnam on Oct. 17 in Suwon, a city lying just south of the capital.

Klinsmann has had six matches under his belt with the Taegeuk Warriors since being appointed in late February. As the Asian Cup approaches, Klinsmann, feeling more comfortable around his players, said he wants to instill more self-belief in them.

“I can go more into conversations with players and get them motivated and confident going into the Asian Cup,” he said. “I saw this team at the World Cup. This team can win the Asian Cup. That’s my belief. It’s about telling the team to constantly believe it. I love this process to learn, and I’ll be very, very hungry when we go to Qatar.”

The German-born coach said he has figured out who will most likely start and who will be coming in from the bench during the Asian Cup, although he also insisted, “The door is always open for young and new players.”

That group may include a few members from South Korea’s under24 team, fresh off an Asian Games gold medal in Hangzhou, China, on Saturday. Four players from that squad have been called up for the friendlies, including the Asian Games scoring champion, Jeong Woo-yeong of VfB Stuttgart, and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Lee Kang-in.

“A huge compliment to Woo-yeong. He was fantastic,” Klinsmann said. “He had a tough year in Freiburg last year. He was not part of the plans. This move to Stuttgart lightens him up again. He’s playing well. He smiles again. I want him to come here and have a big smile.”

Klinsmann added he plans to give Lee a ton of action because he is “hungry for minutes.”

“On one side, it’s wonderful that we have a player with PSG. On the other side, his own personal situation at PSG is not the strongest because he’s a young player trying to find minutes to play,” said Klinsmann, adding he’d been in touch with PSG’s coach, Luis Enrique. “It’s a huge learning curve for him in the next few years. When he comes to us, we want to help him grow. We give him as many minutes as possible on the field and have him understand what it will take now to become a top, top player in Europe.”

Klinsmann will also lean heavily on his old reliables from Europe, such as Son from Tottenham Hotspur and Kim Min-jae of Bayern Munich.

Though they may be fatigued from their club commitments by the time they arrive in South Korea, with jetlag also playing a factor, Klinsmann said he won’t cut down on their minutes any time soon.

“Health of the players is the priority No. 1, absolutely,” Klinsamnn said. “I am sure Min-jae and Sonny don’t want to play less minutes. When they come, I see in their eyes that they want to play. Being fatigued, that’s normal. That’s part of being a national team player. They are used to that. We give them a bit less load in the first couple of days and then they go play.”

Klinsmann also defended the persistent criticism surrounding his work habits as the national team boss. He has been under fire for spending more time overseas than in South Korea, the big knock against him being that he doesn’t watch enough domestic football. Klinsmann, though, argued that the nature of his work is “international, not domestic.”

“I am coaching a national team and so I have to look around internationally to see what happens. I need to know what goes on internationally because that’s my competition,” he said. “My job is to be constantly on the road. It’s my life. If you want to win a tournament on an international surface, you have to think internationally. For me, if I want to win the Asian Cup, I need to know everything about my opponents. Many of them play in Europe.”

He also said criticism from the Korean public and media doesn’t bother him.

“Maybe for some Korean media, it’s different to previous coaches. If somebody criticizes it, that’s okay. But that’s how I do my work. I know I do my work really well,” Klinsmann said. “At the end of the day, when you do that type of work, you have to deliver in tournaments. Everything on my end is focused toward the Asian Cup.

“My office is everywhere. That’s why it’s OK if you always want to know where I am. I am more than happy to tell you where I am,” Klinsmann added. “Hopefully, after a very successful Asian Cup, I need to go even more international as we prepare this team for the World Cup in 2026.”

Japan may stand in South Korea’s path to the top of the Asian Cup and consecutive 3-0 defeats to the regional rivals over the past two years have caused some handwringing in the South Korean fan base.

Klinsmann said he’d like to play Japan more often so that South Korea can eventually overcome their fears of the big opponent.

“My wish would be to play Japan two, three times a year,” he said. “When you have a big rival like Japan, a lot is mental. They have very good quality players but so do we. We have a good team. To build the belief in beating your main rival and teams that seem to be bigger than you… you have to play them as often as you can.

“Unfortunately, there was no chance to play Japan prior to the Asian Cup. Maybe after the Asian Cup, we’ll have a chance to play one or two friendly games a year with Japan, just to build the belief that we are eye to eye, and we can beat them,” Klinsmann continued. “In order to grow as a team and grow the belief, you have to play these games, with the risk that you lose a few games. But then you get a lesson, you learn, and you move on. Hopefully, we get that opportunity in the Asian Cup, hopefully in the final. That’s what we’re going to work on. I’d love it. But we give them respect.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency