More int'l athletes expected to be naturalized to represent Korea at PyeongChang
.jpg?w=728)
Rebeka Kim and Kirill Minov
By Baek Byung-yeul
Following the recent news that two Russia-born biathlon athletes, Aleksandr Starodubets and Anna Frolina, were given Korean citizenship to represent the country in international competitions, two figure skaters will also likely obtain Korean citizenship ahead of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The Korea Skating Union (KSU) said Thursday that Russian ice dancer Kirill Minov and American Alexander Gamelin will apply for Korean citizenship later this year in a bid to compete in the 2018 Winter Games.
“Minov and Gamelin have already been performing in international ice dancing competitions representing Korea, paring up with Rebeka Kim and Min Yu-ra, respectively,” a KSU official said.
“But those international competitions they have taken part in are organized by the International Skating Union (ISU) which allows ice-dancing teams to be multinational,” the official added.
Under the ISU rule, the Minov-Kim pair and Gamelin-Min have competed for medals for Korea, but to skate on the Olympic stage the pairs are required to be citizens of the country they represent.
Kim and Minov started to skate together in 2012 and established themselves as Olympic hopefuls after winning at the annual NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia) Trophy competition’s junior division in 2013. The pair also proved its competitiveness on the senior stage by claiming the 28th Volvo Open Cup title last November. Gamelin and Min became partners last year.
The Gamelin-Min pair was ranked eighth at the 2016 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Taiwan.
Korea has been issuing citizenship to an increasing number of foreign athletes recently in a bid for Olympic successes.
At the 1998 Nagano Olympics, eight naturalized citizens played in the men’s ice hockey event for Japan. And at the 2006 Torino Olympics, host nation Italy stacked its team with Italian-Canadian and Italian-American players.
The latest example can be seen in the 2014 Sochi Olympics as the host nation Russia naturalized some of its competitors. At the center of this phenomenon, there was Korea’s Viktor Ahn, who won three gold medals in short track speed skating for South Korea in the 2006 Games. After becoming a Russian citizen in 2011, Ahn represented Russia at the 2014 Winter Games and was a triple gold medalist again.