ethernetacademy.netFourth place overall, but not enough gold.
South Korea finished fourth with 30 gold, 33 silver and 40 bronze medals at the Hangzhou 2022 Para Asian Games, which concluded on Monday. China dominated the medal count. Iran came in second, followed by Japan in third.
39 gold medals – 9 gold medals short of our goal of fourth place overall. At the 2018 Games in Indonesia, we finished second with 53 gold medals. This time around, bowling, one of Korea’s medal favorites, was dropped from the program.
Chung Jin-wan, president of the Korean Para Sports Federation, said, “We did not do well in athletics and swimming, where the top countries won many medals. This is largely due to the omission of bowling, our strongest sport. The gold medals won by our newly adopted sports, such as taekwondo and go, helped us secure fourth place.”
“Personally, I am most impressed with Taekwondo’s Joo Jeong-hoon’s gold medal. He made up for the disappointment of losing his first match at the Tokyo Paralympic Games and settling for bronze.”
“The wheelchair tennis doubles gold medal is memorable,” said Kim Jin-hyuk. It was an unexpected gold medal. I was surprised to see them play longer rallies than able-bodied tennis despite being in a wheelchair. Cyclist Kim Jung-bin was my personal MVP. He lived outside the athletes’ village and won three gold medals in hot weather. It’s very meaningful that he did it with his able-bodied partner.”
Although the overall results were a bit disappointing, the young athletes gave us hope. Out of the 54 athletes who were supported by the Korean Para Sports Federation, 43 won prizes. They can look forward to the Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games.
In women’s table tennis, Seo Soo-yeon avenged her 2016 Rio Paralympic final loss to Liu Jing (China) to win gold.
“Aside from China (214 golds), the overall performance of the Korean team was leveled by second-place Iran (44 golds), third-place Japan (42 golds), fifth-place Indonesia, sixth-place India (29+ golds), seventh-place Thailand (27 golds), and eighth-place Uzbekistan (25 golds),” said Park Jong-chul, general manager of the Korean team.
Replacing the aging generation of athletes and strengthening international competitiveness is an ongoing challenge.
“Badminton, shooting, and other sports have seen generational change to some extent. Sitting volleyball, archery, and lawn bowls, on the other hand, have not. We will accelerate the generation change in archery and medal-winning table tennis. We will also strengthen the establishment of unemployed teams, player development, and the implementation of the league system.”토토사이트
It is also necessary to expand the base of Para sports. Chung aims to deploy 1,200 adaptive sports coaches. Currently, 860 are active. 46% of students with disabilities attend mainstream schools. He wants to strengthen leadership training for teachers. We will also expand the number of social events that bring together people with and without disabilities.”
The next Para Asian Games will be held in Nagoya, Japan, in 2026.