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| Lee Da-bin, right, the gold medalist of the women's over 67 kg division, battles in the finals at 2022 Roma World Taekwondo Grand-Prix at Foro Italico in Rome, Italy, June 4. Courtesy of World Taekwondo |
By Lee Hae-rin
The World Taekwondo Grand-Prix will be held in Paris for the first time from Sept. 2 to 4, giving competing athletes a taste of the city before the 2024 Olympic Games.
The Paris 2022 World Taekwondo Grand-Prix will be held at the Palais des sports Marcel Cerdan in Levallois-Perret, a northwestern suburb 6 kilometers from the capital's center. The taekwondo competition of the 2024 Olympic Games will take place at the iconic Parisian monument, the Grand Palais, on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees.
The winners of this competition will achieve ranking points for qualification in the upcoming Olympic Games.
A total of 256 athletes from 52 countries, including one Refugee team, will compete in this year's competition in the eight weight categories.
Out of the 32 Tokyo Olympic medalists, 21, including Uzbekistan's Ulugbek Rashitov, Panipak Wongpattanakit from Thailand, Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi from Tunisia, Saleh Elsharabaty from Jordan and Matea Jelic from Croatia, will participate.
Korea will send seven men and six women athletes in eight weight divisions. The participating male players are Jang Jun and Bae Jun-seo in the under 58 kg division; Jin Ho-jun in the under 68 kg; Park Woo-hyeok and Namgoong Hwan in the under 80 kg; and Lee Seon-gi and Kang Yeon-ho in the over 80 kg.
In the women's division, Sim Jae-young and Kang Bo-ra are both in the under 49 kg division, Lee Ah-reum is in the under 57 kg division, Kim Jan-di and Nam Min-seo are in the under 67 kg, and Lee Da-bin, who is in the over 67 kg division, will compete in the event.
The World Taekwondo Grand-Prix series is a global competition held every year for athletes aged 17 or older. The series resumed in June in Rome, Italy after a hiatus of two years and six months amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
As in Rome, the games will be a best-of-three system ― the winner of two games out of three will be the overall winner ― and the competition will be broadcast live on the World Taekwondo website and YouTube.
The next Grand-Prix competition will take place in Manchester, U.K. in October.
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