South Korean athletes got off to a flying start on the first day of the medal race at the first Summer Asian Games in five years, winning three gold medals in a 15-minute span.
Kang Wan-jin (Hongcheon County) and Cha Ye-eun (Kyung Hee University), competing in taekwondo Poomsae, won the men’s and women’s individual events at the 19th Hangzhou Asian Games at the Lin’an Sports and Cultural Exhibition Center in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, on Thursday.
Jeon Woong-tae (Gwangju Metropolitan Government), a bronze medalist at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and South Korea’s first Olympic medalist in modern pentathlon, swept the individual and team events to become the first Korean athlete to win two titles at the Games.
Korea’s national sport, taekwondo, broke through with a relay gold.
Kang Wan-jin scored 8.000-7.460 points in the first two matches of the final, which were contested in authorized poomsae koryo and free poomsae, to defeat Chinese Taipei’s Ma Yun-chung (7.880-7.080).
Poomsae became a regular part of the Asian Games program at Jakarta-Palembang 2018, giving the Korean team its first gold medal.
After winning the men’s team event at the Games five years ago, Kang Wan-jin stood atop the podium in the individual event for a second consecutive gold medal.
Competed in a 12-meter-long by 12-meter-wide arena, pomsae is scored by averaging the five highest and five lowest scores of seven judges.
Kang is no stranger to the sport, having taken first place in the individual event at the World University Games in Chengdu, China, last July.
Thirteen minutes after Kang’s announcement, two gold medals were announced in the modern pentathlon.
Jeon Woong-tae won gold in the men’s individual pentathlon at the Fuyang Throat Sports Center in Hangzhou to win his second consecutive gold medal of the Games, and then teamed up with Lee Ji-hoon and Chung Jin-hwa (above LH) to take first place in the team event.
As of 6 p.m., two Chinese athletes, Huang Yuting (shooting) and Zhang Mingyu (pentathlon), and three Koreans, including Jeon Woong-tae, have won two medals.
In the pentathlon, which combines fencing, swimming, horseback riding, and laser run (athletics plus shooting), Jeon won the event with 1,508 points, beating out teammate Lee Ji-hoon (LH – 1,492 points).
Jeon also won the team competition, combining the scores of Lee Ji-hoon and Chung Jin-hwa (LH) to finish with 4,477 points, ahead of China (4,397 points).
Two minutes after Jeon Woong-tae’s double, the news came from the taekwondo poomsae competition, where Cha Ye-eun won gold.
Cha earned a score of 7.860-7.220 in the certified poomsae koryo and free poomsae, edging out Japan’s Yuiko Niwa (7.620-6.700) to claim the podium.
Cha is a former taekwondo demonstration team member who recently switched to the sport and has established herself as a free arts powerhouse.
The first medal for the Korean team overall came in the modern pentathlon.
Kim Sun-woo (Gyeonggi-do) finished second behind Zhang Mingyu (China – 1,406 points) in the women’s individual event with a total of 1,386 points from fencing, swimming, equestrian and laser run (athletics plus shooting) to win her third consecutive Asian Games medal after winning gold in Incheon 2014 (team event) and bronze in Jakarta-Palembang 2018.
In the team event, which is ranked by the sum of the top three individual scores from each country, Kim combined with Kim Se-hee (1,100) and Sung Seung-min (1,88) for 3,574 points to take bronze behind China (4,094) and Japan (3,705).
In the men’s 66-kilogram judo, Lee Hae-rim (Korea Horse Society) won a silver medal after losing a half to his “nemesis” Yang Yung-wei (Chinese Taipei) in the final of the Hangzhou Asian Games at the Linfu Gymnasium in Xiaoshan, Hangzhou.
While ‘dinosaur’ China dominated early with 12 gold medals, Korea is second in the medal standings with four gold, three silver and one bronze. 안전놀이터