Victory of Miracle

The victory was unbelievable.

It was true for the husband of the new world champ. When his wife called early in the morning to tell him about the victory, his response was, “Are you pulling my leg?”

At the beginning, Hyun-hee thought that simply advancing to the semifinal was a great achievement. She defeated, however, Silvia Renaldi (Italy) ranking 37th by 15-11. It was a good start for her. She advanced to the quarter-final by barely winning over world-ranking 7th and 50th players by mere one point each.

A big opponent emerged before her once she went through the first huddles. She had to fight and win over World’s number 1 Lora Fleshell (France) to the semifinal.

Hyun-hee’s French opponent is a star player known around the world. She won two gold medals in ’96 Atlanta Olympics, and has won three world championships so far. In terms of pure credentials, Hyun-hee was not a match at all.

But Hyun-hee pulled out a victory against the strong opponent with her speed and her trademark of swift attacks. The final score was for Hyun-hee, 15-11. It was a huge victory for Hyun-hee. Now she successfully toppled the world’s number one player. Hyun-hee also beat the world’s third best German player by 15-14, and stood on top of the world.

Hyun-hee’s height (168cm) is rather short for an epee player. She is a lot shorter than her western counterparts, who are usually 180cm high, by a head. On the podium, she looked like a younger sister with her older siblings. In addition, the swords used in epee are heavier and stronger than the others used in other types of fencing.

But, Hyun-hee has overcome all these obstacles with her national gift of speed and her skills of garde and contre-six. Hyun-hee’s victory in the world championship is a miracle. Fencing was first introduced into Korea in 1935. But it failed to draw the public’s attention and has been put outside the spotlight ever since. Throughout its 60-year history, currently 1,100 players are officially registered. Furthermore, only three corporate teams exist. It’s worse for women. There are no “private” corporate teams for them other than teams affiliated with localities. In 1998, fencing enjoyed the spotlight for a short period of time by Kim Young-ho’s winning the gold medal in ’98 Sydney Olympics. But the situation did not improve for fencing players. The KATA, a representative body of fencing player did not find its chairman for almost one year from February of 2001, and fell into a status of a troubled organization. Actually, in this world championship, Korea’s participation was almost impossible due to the lack of funds needed for the participation. Fortunately, Yoo Yong-kyum took the chairmanship and thus Hyun-hee got to play in the championship. In the meanwhile, the other Korean players did not make good records. Kim Hee-jung failed in the round of 32, Kim Mi-jung in the round of 64 and Lee Kum-nam just before the final rounds.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com