Korean Swim Phenom Aiming for Record

Swimming wunderkind Park Tae-hwan (17, Gyeonggi High School) will give another try at setting the Korean national record in the upcoming 78th Dong-A Swimming Competition, which will be held April 18 to 22 in Ulsan. The competition is hosted by Dong-A Ilbo and supervised by the Korea Swimming Federation.

Park has gained international recognition after winning two silver medals in the World Championship held early this month. Starting with the national record breaker in the 200m and 400m races at the Dong-A Competition last year, young Park has renewed the national records seven times within just one year.

Park will only compete in the men’s 400m and 800m relay swimming on April 19 and the mixed 400m relay swimming on April 22. The decision to not compete in individual events is said to have come from concerns of fatigue that Park has yet to unwind from after the World Championship. However, the first swimmer’s time in a relay race is recognized as an individual record. There is still a possibility of a record breaker, especially in the 800m relay race where each swimmer swims 200m freestyle. The Korean national record was set by none other than Park in 2005 World Swimming Championship who was timed at 1:49:70. More than 1,300 athletes will compete in four categories in the upcoming competition: swimming, diving, water polo, and synchronized swimming. KBS 1TV (April 19) and 2TV (April 20) will broadcast the afternoon events live.

Sung-Kyu Kim kimsk@donga.com