[AG/english]A Dreaming Silver Medal for the Sleeping Korean Diving

A silver medal worthier than a gold medal is a saying for this. The Korean Diving tasted a deep emotion to win a medal in the Asian Games in 16 years.

At the Women’s 3M Springboard Synchronized Diving match in the Sajik Swimming Center, Busan on the 8th, the Kang Min-gyong (Namnyong High School, Cheju) and Im Sun-young (Busan Dong Girls’ High School) pair marked 5 rounds total of 248.04 points and won the silver medal following the Guajingjing and Woominsha couple (319.80 points) of China, who won the World Championship last year.

It has been 16 years for Korea to won a medal at Diving in the Asian Games since Lee Sun-gi of the 86 Seoul Games, and it has been 32 years for women’s division since Kim Yong-chae of the 70 Bangkok Games.

The Kang Min-gyong and Im Sun-young pair managed very difficult motions including the 2.7 difficulty level ‘Standing back, turning forward twice and a half and submerging,’ and received high points in both the technical and synchronized motions parts.

In the meantime, Guajingjing, who considered as a successor of the world’s ‘Diving Queen’ of the 90’s Pumingsha, paired up with a new partner Woominsha and perfectly performed very difficult techniques including one perfect 10 points, so she drew admiration from the audience. It was an unexpected crop for Korea to win a medal at Diving. Before this Asian Games, even the Diving coaches shook their heads saying, “There is no chance for medal.”

The reason why the medal forecast was so pessimistic was because China, which controls the world Diving circle, was confident to sweep all the medals, and most of the participating countries invited coaches from China in their coaching staff and received ‘tutoring’ from them.

The counties, which had no coaches from China, out of 12 participating counties in Diving were Korea and Kazakhstan only. Japan even naturalized the star coach Sunshei, and Malaysia also received coaching from Wangzouryang, who worked as the Diving coach of China and raised Pumingsha and others. North Korea also invited a Chinese coach for three months and received a special training.

Therefore, the silver medal of Korea at Diving, which became a proxy war of Chinese coaches, was evaluated as worthier than a gold medal because it was done for ourselves. And it was even worthier because it was a medal from a poor ground by Kang Min-gyong and Im Sun-young, who were paired up for less than a year.

The Diving players waited until the Jamsil Indoor Pool was vacated and did ‘practices under the moonlight’ because there was no Diving pool in the Taerung Training Facilities. A member of the board of directors of the Korean Swimming Association couldn’t finish his words saying, “Our dream came true. If we support little bit more, our players, who have better physical conditions can beat China in few years…”