Missing Even A Second On The Way To Athens

They are 42.5kg. The dumbbells, which weigh the same as the body weight of an average woman, are dancing like the sticks used in rhythmic gymnastics. Every athlete holds a dumbbell in each hand. It is no lighter than holding the weight equivalent of two women in both hands.

Wrestling athletes lift dumbbells in a unique way. Unlike weightlifters, who lift barbells in a straight forward manner, wrestlers twist their hands from inside to outside, and from outside to inside, holding the dumbbells up and down in blinking moments, in order to increase the twisting ability of the upper part of their bodies. When several athletes work out together using this method of dumbbell lifting, a spectacular scene is created which is even better than any performing art.

For these wrestling athletes, climbing a 20 meter-long rope, which is a very long height for most people, is not a difficult task. They do not straddle the ropes between their legs to sustain their body weight. Only arm strength is needed. The movement of women wrestling athletes, who are in an incipient stage, cannot be easily ignored.

On January 20, in the weight-training gymnasium in the athlete’s town of Taerueng, the passion of the athletes there is hot enough to heat a piece of iron.

Because of the harsh weather, which gets as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius, even breath can be frozen inside of the gymnasium. But, on the naked upper bodies of the athletes, the sweat is flowing continuously.

On Lunar New Year, people usually visit their hometowns to salute to their parents and meet with their boyfriends and girlfriends. But for these athletes, it is a different story and another world. Strong candidates for gold medals in the upcoming Athens Olympic games, Kim In-seop and Moon Eui-jae, are from Daegu. But they exchanged holiday greetings with their parents by telephone instead. Only 206 days are remaining to the beginning of the Athens Olympic games. Even a second is important.

126 athletes in 7 kinds of sports including wrestling, judo, weightlifting, badminton, track and field, swimming, and ice sports are remaining in Taereung. Most of the other athletes will return by January 23.

After the holiday period, international tournaments that will render an Olympic qualification ticket will continue one by one. In wrestling, the freestyle athletes will participate in Olympic Quarter First Tournament, which is scheduled to be held in Slovakia. In judo, the male athletes will participate in the Paris and Hungary Open beginning February 3, and the female athletes will take part in Hamburg Open beginning February 17. In other sports, the training schedules have already been drawn up.

The representative athletes, who burn with passion for the Athens Olympic games, do not have a holiday in their heart.

Hwan-Soo Zang zangpabo@donga.com