Hard to find promising sports stars

It is hard to find any promising rookies these days.

Coaches of fighting sports, dubbed `` Olympic gold medal events for Korea,'' often heave sighs, saying they cannot find any players with potential. There have been almost no new boxing aspirants for 10 years. The situation is similar in judo and wrestling.

Park Jong-Hak, manager of the national men's judo team, says that children have tended not to participate in tough sports at all for five or six years. Children with potential are persuaded by their parents not to choose contact sports or are apt to turn to other sports. This generation shift resulted in no gold medals in the judo competition in the recently ended Sydney Olympics.

This trend is expected to accelerate in the years to come, they observed. In the case of women¡¯s judo, once retired stars such as Cho Min-Sun and Jung Sung-Sook made a comeback in a vivid testimony to the lack of promising rookies.

Wrestling has faced a wealth of problems, too. Thanks to hard training, the wrestlers managed to avoid dismal results, but how long can the nation rely on specific wrestlers like Sim Kwon-Ho, the sole gold medallist in wrestling in Sydney?

A university marathon coach said he had traveled throughout the country in search of up-and-coming child athletes, but it was rare to find one with even a minimum of potential, let alone a talent like Hwang Young-Jo, who won the gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

He said few children dare to run, overcoming the pains of the world today. He added that the Korean marathon had no choice but to depend on one person, Lee Bong-Ju, over the past 10 years, and this is largely due to the fact that no worthy successor has appeared.

North Korea also lacks promising athletes, but for different reasons than South Korea.

A coach of a ball game said, smiling bitterly, that he could not find any one with potential because the youth of today are small. It seems that incomplete development caused by recent food shortages is to blame.

It is very suggestive that North Korea fielded aged veterans such as gymnast Bae Kil-Su and wrestler Kang Yong-Gyun in the Sydney Olympics, failing to garner a gold medal.

Children today have no particular interest in the basic sports like fighting events, track and field and swimming. They are only interested in popular sports like baseball, soccer and basketball. They pay no attention to sports which will not earn them money, or ``hungry sports.¡¯¡¯