(Olympics) Short track champion trying to laugh off pressure ahead of relay final

유지호 / 2022-02-15 15:01:59

(Olympics) short tracker-medal

▲ South Korean short track speed skater Hwang Dae-heon trains at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing during the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb. 15, 2022. (Yonhap)

▲ South Korean short track speed skaters Choi Min-jeong, Park Jang-hyuk and Hwang Dae-heon (L to R) share a laugh during a training session at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing on Feb. 15, 2022. (Yonhap)

(Olympics) short tracker-medal

(Olympics) Short track champion trying to laugh off pressure ahead of relay final

By Yoo Jee-ho

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (Yonhap) -- Hwang Dae-heon isn't prone to giving cliched answers. Ask the South Korean short track speed skater competing in the Olympics, and he won't resort to stock responses, like taking it one race at a time or giving it his 110 percent.

Having earlier won the men's 1,500m gold medal at Beijing 2022, Hwang will take a crack at his second gold medal in the men's 5,000m relay on Wednesday. South Korea has produced a multiple gold medalist in short track at every Olympics since Turin 2006.

Hwang is the only South Korean with a chance to win two gold medals in Beijing.

So, pressure?

"Yeah, of course. I absolutely feel that pressure," Hwang said with a laugh, after a training session at Capital Indoor Stadium on Tuesday. "I suppose I can get greedy about trying to win that gold for myself. But more than anything, I just want to see every one of my teammates happy and have the last laugh together."

Hwang said he and his relay teammates aren't thinking about the result so much, and are instead concentrating on executing their race plans.

"We've gone through so much together to come this far, and we want to leave it all out there on the ice," Hwang said. "If we can do that, then I think a great result will naturally follow. Hopefully, every one of us will be able to say at the end, 'I did everything I could have done and I have no regrets.'"

In the early days of the Olympics, Hwang got caught up in an officiating controversy following his disqualification from the 1,000m semifinals. It took Hwang's gold medal in the 1,500m last Wednesday to turn the spotlight back to on-ice performance.

Hwang's earlier disqualification ended up putting Chinese skaters in position to win medals. Many angry South Korean fans and skating officials claimed that judges in Beijing were making calls in favor of the Olympic host. They urged South Korean short trackers to stay as far away from Chinese skaters as possible during races, because any contact with them could result in dubious penalties and disqualification.

Hwang, on the other hand, said he has a lot more than just China to worry about in the relay final. There will be five teams in total -- South Korea, China, Canada, Italy and the Russian Olympic Committee. That's one more than typical, after China received a pass in the semifinals following an inadvertent collision with Canada.

"I know people are worried about China, but there are other great teams, too," Hwang said. "The fact that these teams have reached the Olympic final shows you how competitive they are. We're paying attention to all of them."

Hwang emerged victorious in the 1,500m final that featured a record 10 skaters. Asked if his experience in such a crowded race would help in the relay final with five teams and 20 skaters in total, Hwang said, "The relay is a completely different animal. No matter how talented individual skaters are, you can't win in relay if you don't have good chemistry."

And this is a tight South Korean bunch, an eclectic collection of fun-loving characters and quieter types who have deftly found some common ground. Hwang said he and his teammates have been staying up late at nights to talk shop.

"We just have so much to talk about," Hwang said. "Before individual races, we all had to do our own things and get our rest. Ahead of the relay, we've been doing a lot of things together and talking a great deal about opposing teams."

Kwak Yoon-gy, the elder statesman at 32, has been telling his younger teammates that he will bear all the burden of trying to win a medal so that other skaters can just go and compete.

Hwang said he appreciated the gesture, but it only helped so much.

"We all have to share that burden," Hwang said. "I know Yoon-gy is trying to take pressure off our shoulders. But it's still there."

(END)