Korea Ranks Seventh in Medal Tally

With six gold medals to flaunt, the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics have turned out to be the most successful Korean winter Olympics ever.

In yesterday’s women’s 1,000m short-track speed skating race at Palavela, Korea’s Jin Sun-yu won gold by beating China’s Yang Yang and Wang Meng. Jin took gold in two other events as well: the 1500m individual and 3000m relay.

In the men’s 5000m relay, Korea’s Ahn Hyun-su, Lee Ho-suk, Seo Ho-jin, and Song Suk-woo won gold after a tight race with Canada. Like Jin, the men’s 1000m and 1500m champion Ahn Hyun-su won gold in three speed skating events as well.

Ahn and Jin are the first Korean athletes to win three gold medals in the same Olympics. In past games, Kim Ki-hun and Jeon Yi-gyeong each won two gold medals in short-track skating, and Park Seong-hyeon and Yun Mi-jin each won two gold medals in archery in the summer Olympics.

So far, Germany’s Michael Greis in the biathlon, and Ahn Hyun-su and Jin Sun-yu in short-track skating are the only three athletes to win three gold in this year’s Olympics.

Korea won its first two gold medals in short-track skating in the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, where the sport was first adopted as an Olympic event. In the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, South Korea won four gold medals in short-track skating and ranked sixth in the overall medal standings.

Germany appears to have the top spot locked up in Torino with 11 gold medals, while South Korea has won six gold, three silver, and two bronze, good enough for seventh place overall. The last time South Korea made the top 10 in a winter Olympics medal tally was eight years ago in Nagano.

Sung-Kyu Kim kimsk@donga.com