Judoka Majlinda Kelmendi becomes first Kosovo Olympic medalist

For the first time in the history of the Olympics, Kosovo’s national flag flaps at the highest spot. Majlinda Kelmendi wept after her triumph in the women's 52kg judo final in Rio. Italy's Odette Giuffrida, her last counterpart, held Kelmendi’s arm high up in the air and congratulated her nation’s first Olympic medal.

The 25-year-old judoka has swept victories in the World Cups, the European Cups, and the Grand Prix since 2010, after first showing off her excellence in 2009 at the world stage. She competed in the 2012 London Olympics, and ranked at the top in the following year. Back then, she was a citizen of Serbia, not Kosovo. The International Court of Justice had already ruled on the declaration of Kosovo's secession in July 2010, but the country’s National Olympics Committee was recognized belatedly in December 2014. Therefore, the Rio Olympics is the first stage where Kosovo attended under its own flag.

Kelmendi’s victory reminds Koreans of the late Kim Sung-jib who won the first Olympic medal as a Korean in weightlifting, in London back in 1948. Kim let the world know of the Republic of Korea as a sovereign state, winning a bronze at the global sports competition where he attended under the Korean national flag for the first time. The Dong-A Ilbo shared the great joy with the 30 million Koreans in a related article, and the late Min Jae-ho of Seoul Central Broadcasting Station (currently changed to KBS), which had to borrow BBC’s radio frequency for broadcasting, cried the whole time he hosted the news.

이원주기자 takeoff@donga.com