High Praise for Paralympic Athletes
By Cho Jae-hyon
Staff Reporter
Twenty-four South Korean athletes did not win as many medals as they had targeted in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Paralympics but they pulled off impressive performances signaling they will reign in the next Paralympic Games.
Korea ranked 18th among 44 nations at the event, which closed Sunday, after fielding its largest-ever number of athletes ― 24 ― in all five games of the Paralympics.
For the wheelchair curlers who bagged a silver medal, the first medal in a team event in Korea's history at the Winter Paralympics, the medal is worth more than gold ― given all the adverse conditions they had to overcome.
It is a feat achieved in a short history of seven years. The biggest handicap for them was the absence of a training rink. Still, they beat out traditionally-strong teams from Europe and North America, and staged a rally against team Canada in the final.
As they had no curling rink for their exclusive use, the team, formed in August 2003, had to practice on the surface of a frozen swimming pool in a training center in Gyeonggi Province ahead of the games.
They said hard training and willpower were behind the result. They went through hard physical training from June to October last year, including climbing a 4.3-kilometer uphill trail on Mt. Chiak in Gangwon Province in wheelchairs.
``At that time, it's like I was going to die but I couldn't stop because it would mean an end to a national team member,'' Kim Myung-jin said. Kim has had to rely on a wheelchair following a car accident in 1990.
Skipper Kim Hak-sung, 42, who was disabled in an industrial disaster in 1991, began the team. Kim looked for other players ahead of the establishment of curling team in 2003.
He persuaded Kim Myung-jin, 39, and Kang Mi-suk, 42, the only female member, into joining the five-member team.
Kang wept after winning the semifinal games as it meant she will be able to take home a medal to her 77-year-old mother.
``My mom's dream is for me to win a medal (in the Paralympics),'' she said.
What the national curling team needs most is its own training rink.
``We are the national team. But we had to practice on the surface of a frozen swimming pool as we had no rink of our own,'' skip Kim said.
Korea's Paralympics team captain Kim Woo-sung said, ``The wheelchair curlers will emerge as one of the strongest teams in the world if they are provided with better training conditions.''
Kim said more training and state-of-the-art equipment are essential for Korean teams to compete better in upcoming games.