Swimmers Hwang Sun-woo and Kim Woo-min challenge for medals in the individual event and the team event, the 800m relay. Badminton Ahn Se-young, who was eliminated in the quarterfinals in Tokyo, is a favorite to win in Paris. High jumper Woo Sang-hyuk, who is participating in his third Olympics, says, “I’ll definitely medal in Paris.” Im Si-hyun, ranked first in the archery national team competition, aims for 10 consecutive wins and 3 gold medals in the team competition.
Hwang Seon-woo ‘thumbs up’
The Korean team is expected to run a tough medal race at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
However, Korea also has several Olympic champion candidates that the world is paying attention to.
Hwang Seon-woo (20, Gangwon Provincial Office), Ahn Se-young (22, Samsung Life Insurance), and Woo Sang-hyuk (27, Yongin City Hall), who received ‘mixed congratulations’ by becoming ‘stars without medals’ at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, stood on the podium in Paris. We are determined to hold a medal ceremony.
Kim Woo-min (22, Gangwon Provincial Office), who only participated in the team event in Tokyo, and Im Si-hyeon (20, Korea National Sport University), who unfortunately missed out on the Olympic qualification, are also attracting attention as ‘winner candidates’ and are heading to Paris.
Hwang Sun-woo was the first Korean athlete and the first Asian athlete to reach the finals of this event in the 100m freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics in 65 years since Atsushi Tani (Japan) at the 1956 Melbourne Games, and took 5th place.
In the 200m freestyle preliminaries, he set a new Korean record and a new world junior record at the time of 1 minute 44.62 seconds and advanced to the semifinals, becoming the first Korean athlete to reach the Olympic finals in 9 years since Park Tae-hwan at the 2012 London Games and take 7th place.
In the 200m, Hwang Sun-woo’s prelims time (1 minute 44.62 seconds) was better than the final time (1 minute 45.26 seconds).
This was the result that revealed the lack of experience of ‘teenager’ Hwang Sun-woo, who was competing on the Olympic stage for the first time.
Afterwards, Sunwoo Hwang succeeded in winning medals at the World Championships three times in a row in the men’s 200m freestyle, taking second place at the 2022 Budapest Games, third place at the 2023 Fukuoka Games, and first place at the 2024 Doha Games.
After competing in the World Championships for three consecutive years and participating in the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023, I opened my eyes to ‘race management’.
Although there are many competitors such as David Popovich (Romania) and Matthew Richards (Great Britain), Hwang Sun-woo, who has consistently reached the podium in recent major competitions, is a candidate to win the men’s 200m freestyle recognized by World Swimming. 스포츠토토