Taekwondo Format Set for Beijing
By Kang Seung-woo
Staff Reporter
The Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA) selected four classes for South Korea to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
After two meetings, the Taekwondo body announced Wednesday that it would send athletes to the men's under 68- and over 80- and the women's under 57- and under 67-kilogram competitions.
To pick up representative athletes for the world qualification, it will host a two-day tryout on July 5 at Kukkiwon, World Taekwondo Headquarters, in Seoul.
The world qualifiers will be held in September in Manchester, England.
The association said, ``Based on results of recent international competitions including the 2007 World Championships in Beijing and player depth, we chose four divisions, which we think are closer to gold medals.''
At the Olympics, eight divisions, four for men and four for women, will be staged and one country can dispatch its fighters to two classes for each gender.
The KTA did not have a different opinion on the three categories, men's under 68-, women's under 57- and under 67-kilograms but it went through long-standing debates in selecting the men's over 80 and the under 58 categories.
Supporters of the 58-kilogram weight class appealed that Korea has plenty of athletes while people backing the over 80-kilogram category said as the Taekwondo motherland, Korea should send an athlete to the heaviest class where a winner is regarded as the world champion.
In the over 80-kilogram weight class, South Korea has dominated since 2000 when the sport was adopted as an official event in the Olympics _ Kim Kyung-hoon in Sydney and Moon Dae-sung in Athens.
After much debate a vote of 15 to 7 decided that the 80-kilogram class would be included.