Paralympic Athletes Yearn For Younger Generation

The average age of Korean athletes participating in 2004 Athens Paralympic Games is 40.8 years old for shooting, 38.5 years for weight lifting, 38.5 years for archery, and 38 years for table tennis. Some have even called the athletes the “Senile Team” because the team mainly consists of older players.

The call for younger blood is serious. Former table tennis champion Lee Hae-gon (51) and weight lifter Jung Geum-jong (39) amongst the Korean athletes were striving for five consecutive wins, but could not turn back the ravages of time. Unfortunately, there are no young, new athletes to carry on their title hopes.

Except for Cho Jae-gwan (27) and gold medallist Kim Young-gun (20) in table tennis, and athletes in group events such as boccia (a game in which players try to throw the ball as close as possible to the target), and goal ball (a game for the blind in which players try to score by throwing a ball into a net by listening to sounds), nearly all events do not even have a single player under 20.

This is due to the lack of support from the government for disabled sports. Support did spark interest in the 1988 Seoul Paralympics and produced interested athletes, but the government failed to invest in paralympic athletes further afterwards. Many of the athletes in this year’s games were veterans of the 1988 paralympics.

The head of the Korean team Bae Soon-hak expressed his concern, stating, “A lot of the athletes cannot concentrate completely on training because they are financially unstable. There is no future, even for Paralympic medallists, because of a loophole in the pension policy, so the physically challenged avoid being athletes,” and went on to say, “laws and policies should create conditions where disabled athletes can train without worrying.”

Won-Hong Lee bluesky@donga.com