Trailblazer on snow

Korea’s bobsleigh national team practices at Alpensia Ski Resort in Gangwon Province, Monday. / Yonhap

Korea's sled team aiming for medal contention in PyeongChang

Vice president of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation Kang Kwang-bae

By Jung Min-ho

Kang Kwang-bae used to be one of only three Korean athletes in the Olympic sled events. Now, under his watch, the nation’s 16 athletes in bobsleigh, skeleton and luge punched their tickets to the Sochi Games.

Yet Kang, current vice president of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, believes their achievement is still far behind their potential.

In a recent interview with The Korea Times, he said the Korean sled team’s goal in Sochi is to show its potential to medal four years from now in PyeongChang.

“They are the first generation who passed a stringent test to make the national team,” Kang said. “The situation was quite different only a few years ago. Even for the national team, for example, there was no regular training, no place for practice and no hope for medals.”

Through his 12-year Olympic athletic career, Kang earned them all; he had to ask, negotiate and sometimes fight for them.

Kang’s apprentices later became the beneficiaries, and they didn’t disappoint him.

Yoon Sung-bin finished first early this month at the sixth Confederation Cup skeleton event of the season in Whistler, Canada. That was Korea’s first-ever gold medal in the sport at an international competition. The bobsleigh team of Won Yun-jong and Jung Jung-lin also won the America’s Cup in March, Korea’s first international title.

Kim Sun-ok in the women’s bobsleigh and Sung Eun-ryung in the women’s luge have also been trailblazers under his guidance.

“Frankly, it is premature to expect medals from them. They might be able to make it, but the more realistic goal is a top-10 finish for all the sled events,” Kang said.

All the athletes and even coaches in sled events were discovered and trained, at least for a while, by Kang when the sports were completely out of the public eye. Korea now has venues, coaches and athletes. It is a dramatic improvement from scratch in just about 20 years.

Kang recalled 1995 when he was selected as one of the three athletes on Korea’s first national luge team. The other two quit less than three months later.

“They said they didn’t see a future in the sport. But I did. More importantly, I really enjoyed it,” Kang said. “I had a dream to compete in the Olympics, which later came true in Nagano, Japan.”

After his first Olympics, he decided to move to Austria to learn more about luge. But there, he was dismissed from the national team.

“It felt like the whole world fell down,” Kang said. “However, it later proved to be the best thing that happened to me.”

In 1999, he came across skeleton, which wasn’t an Olympic sport back then. But Kang put his heart into it and competed at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where the sport was added to the Olympic program.

At the 2010 Vancouver Games, he led the Korean bobsleigh team to become the first athlete in history to compete in all three sled events at the Olympics.

Kang retired in Vancouver and later got a job at the Korea National Sport University where he still searches for talent for sled events.

“Wherever I go, I ask, ‘Do you know anyone who looks fit for sledding?’ Kang said. “My job now is to find raw talent and train them to win Olympic medals.”

Despite some hardware improvements, including a starting-roller built in 2010, Korea still has a very limited talent pool, he said.

“There are less than 20 people who actually tried bobsleighing,” Kang said. “If athletes can show how fun the sled events are in Sochi, it will be a success.”