More Gold Medals Next Time

Park Tae-hwan (18, Kyunggi High School), the “Hope of Korean Swimming,” had to give up his hopes for more gold medals at the FINA World Swimming Championships.

Park, who won a gold medal in the men’s 400 meter freestyle and a bronze medal in the 200 meter freestyle, setting the Asian record both times, came in with a time of 15 minutes 3.62 seconds in third place after world record holder Grant Hackett (27, Australia, 14 minutes 59.24 seconds) and Eric Vendt (26, U.S.A., 14 minutes 59.82 seconds) in group five of the men’s 1500 meter freestyle preliminaries held on March 31 at the Susie O’Neill Pool of the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia.

In groups six and seven, which came after Park’s group five, six swimmers, including David Davies (22, U.K., 14 minutes 53.57 seconds, preliminary rank 1) produced records better than Park’s, causing him to be pushed to ninth place in the preliminary rankings. Park failed to make it to the finals.

Park showed the fastest start reaction time (0.68 seconds) among the 47 swimmers in the preliminaries, and ranked first after the first 50 meter lap, but gave up the lead to Vendt in the next lap, and fell behind Hackett in the 1150-1200 meter lap, ranking third.

After the event, Park said, “I wasn’t able to train for a whole month after the Doha Asian Games, so I wasn’t able to work on my stamina. My competitors had been working for one year, but I only had two months. Since this competition is something like a prelude to the Olympics, I will keep my hopes up and train hard for a gold medal in the Beijing Olympics next year.”

As soon as he returns to Korea on April 3, Park will be admitted to Samsung Medical Center to receive treatment for a corn the size of a quarter on his left foot. He had been receiving traditional treatment but it had not been entirely removed. He had been feeling some pain, so a surgical operation was decided on. After spending about fifteen days doing only weight training, Park will begin training for the pre-Olympics that will be held in August in Japan.

Meanwhile, swimming genius Michael Phelps (22, U.S.A.) failed to become the first swimmer to win eight gold medals in a single swimming competition when the team’s third swimmer, Ian Crocker (25), was disqualified due to a false start during the men’s 400m medley relay preliminaries.

jeon@donga.com