Tag: figure skating

It looks like the South Korean media is trying to sensationalize an accidental collision during a figure skating competition into an anti-American incident:

A South Korean sports agency is claiming an American figure skater intentionally injured its client Lim Eun-soo with a skate blade in a collision during the ongoing world championships.
According to All That Sports, Lim sustained a cut to her calf Wednesday when Mariah Bell struck Lim’s leg with her skate during their warmup prior to the ladies’ short program at the International Skating Union (ISU) World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama, Japan.

Lim was immediately treated for her injury. She was 30th among 40 skaters to take the ice and had the cut on her leg taped before performing her program.
In her first senior world championships, Lim, 16, set a personal high with 72.91 points to rank fifth, while Bell, 22, scored 71.26 points to place sixth.
An All That Sports official who witnessed the collision said there was enough ground to believe Bell’s act was premeditated, since Lim was skating close to the walls so as not to interfere with others, and Bell came from behind the South Korean to make contact.

Yonhap

The only problem with the South Korean sports agency’s claim is that it is not true:

he agency that represents Lim, All That Sports, told Agence France-Press that Bell has been “bullying Lim for months,” and once the incident occurred, asked the South Korean federation to lodge a formal complaint with the International Skating Union, the worldwide federation for the sport. As one of Lim’s agents told Yonhap News, Bell was waiting her turn to rehearse her program when she “suddenly kicked and stabbed Lim’s calf with her skate blades.”

Sensational? Yes. True? No.
Bell was the one who was rehearsing her short program, not Lim, which means Bell had the right of way on the ice and it was Lim’s job to get out of her way. Videotape shot from the stands shows Bell skating backwards at a relatively rapid pace near the boards with Lim in her path. At that point, Bell would not have been able to see Lim — but Lim had the responsibility to see Bell and move out of the way.

This is protocol for every skater at every competition, where six skaters share the ice on practice sessions and warmups.
What’s more, because Lim trains with Bell, she certainly should know Bell’s short program after seeing it on training sessions for months. All skaters get to know what their training partners and competitors are doing, including where they are headed and where their jumps, spins and other moves are placed on the ice.

As Bell went by Lim, she started to turn to go forward, and apparently her skate blade slightly cut Lim’s leg. Both skaters were able to compete in the short program later in the day, and both did very well, with Lim finishing fifth with a personal-best score and Bell sixth. 
This is not the first time there has been a collision involving two skaters in a competition. In fact, it would be unusual for an event like the worlds or Olympics to go by without a practice collision. The same day as the Bell-Lim scrap, there was a much more spectacular crash: French pairs skater Vanessa James was skating backwards when she and Italy’s Matteo Guarise slammed into each other at full speed during the warmup before the pairs competition.

As conspiracy theories spread across the internet, the ISU put out a statement saying there was “no evidence” that Bell deliberately kicked Lim, and Arutunian told a Russian news agency the same thing, according to an internet translation.

USA Today

It appears to me that the Korean media may be trying to recreate another Apollo Anton Ohno like controversy that led to him being public enemy #1 and increased anti-Americanism in South Korea. However, this was not the Olympics and no gold medal was on the line thus I expect this will be quickly forgotten.

However, continue to expect every little incident that can remotely be twisted for anti-Americanism to be published hoping something will eventually stick.

It is pretty clear that the Olympics have turned into a professional sports league considering how it has its own free agency period now for countries to recruit athletes from other countries:

After a solid performance at an International Skating Union (ISU) competition here, South Korea’s figure skating pair Min Yu-ra and Alexander Gamelin said Friday they really want to compete in front of home crowds at the Winter Olympics next year.

Min and Gamelin, who have been skating together since 2015, finished eighth among 16 ice dance teams at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, some 230 kilometers east of Seoul. The ISU competition, open to non-Europeans, is one of the test events for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics.

“We received a lot of energy from home crowds even when our names were announced,” Min said. “Since the PyeongChang Olympics is going to be here, we expect lots of support from fans. We’re so excited.”

Min and Gamelin were also eighth last year, but this time they had a better score, improving 6.27 points from 2016 to finish with 144.69 points Friday.

“Last year, we didn’t have enough preparations because we had little time skating together,” Min said. “But this year, we prepared well. We wanted to get a better result than last year, but other teams skated better this time. We’re satisfied with the result today.”

Gamelin is an American citizen, but is seeking naturalization to compete at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics next year with Min.

At ISU competitions, as long as one member of a tandem is South Korean, that duo can compete under the South Korean flag. At the Olympics, however, both members of a team must be South Korean citizens to represent the country.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

11-Year-Old Figure Skater Becomes Youngest-Ever National Champion https://t.co/JA8TcD4bbJ

— The Chosun Daily (@EnglishChosun) January 11, 2016

Retired figure skater Kim Yu-na attends a ceremony at an ice rink in Seoul on Jan. 9, 2015, to give a wreath to Park So-yeon, who won a figure skating championship. (Yonhap)

Good news out there for all you single ROK Heads, via the Marmot’s Hole comes news that Kim Yu-na has dumped her hockey player boyfriend:

South Korean figure skating queen Kim Yuna, 24, and ice hockey player Kim Won-jung, 31, have broken up, Korean media reported Tuesday.

Sources said they are unsure when the pair separated.

In August, Sgt. Kim Won-jung, while serving his mandatory military service as an athlete in the military corps, made headlines when he sustained leg injuries after getting in a car accident following a visit to a massage parlor.  [Korea Times]

Here are the details of what Kim Won-jung did to get dumped by Kim Yu-na:

Three ice hockey national team members on active military duty, including the sergeant known to be South Korea’s figure skating icon Kim Yuna’s boyfriend, were discovered to have left their barracks without permission and failed to report a car crash they were involved in, the defense ministry said Wednesday.

On June 27, the three draftees — two sergeants, surnamed Lee and Kim, and a corporal, surnamed Lee — left their training camp in Ilsan, just north of Seoul, in a car owned by one of the sergeants, and went to a massage parlor.

On their way back to the hotel some two hours later, their car was hit by a civilian vehicle, which left sergeant Kim with injuries requiring six weeks of medical treatment and the two with minor bruises, according to the ministry.

Kim reportedly suffered ligament damage on his right knee.  [The Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this just seems like one of those only in Korea stories.