Future Is Now for Korean Swim Phenom

Park Tae-hwan (Age 17, Kyunggi High School) has gone beyond being a “swimming prodigy” to become a “pillar of Korean swimming,” and there is no stopping him from pushing on. At the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championship, which took place in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Park Tae-hwan once again broke the Korean record which he held in the men’s 200-meter freestyle, and came in second place, earning the silver medal around his neck. Park Tae-hwan’s record was 1:47:51. He was just 1.31 seconds behind the first place winner, American Klete Keller (1:46:20).

Park Tae-hwan was responsible for shocking the world by winning the silver medal in the men’s 400 and 1500-meter freestyle at the Short Course World Swimming Championships in April, in which world-wide swimming stars took part. However, his performances did not receive as much credit as they deserved because it was a 25m short course and not the regular 50m course.

This time Park won a silver medal, fair and square in a regular course. This is an exceptional result when considering that due to his great stamina, Park Tae-hwan’s strongest events are typically the middle and long distances of 400m and 1500m.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the last couple of years, Park Tae-hwan has been re-writing Korea’s history of swimming. He set a Korean record (1:49:70) in the 200m freestyle at the FINA World Swimming Championship in Montreal in July of last year, and just 11 months later at the national team official record testing at Ulsan, he pulled forward his record by 0.88 seconds to 1:48:82. He broke this record again by 1.31 seconds in just two months.

The world record for this event is held by Australia’s swimming hero, Ian Thorpe, who set a record of 1:44:06 at the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka.

Those involved in Korean swimming are greatly excited by the news of Park Tae-hwan’s 200m silver medal. This is because the chances of gaining a gold medal at the Doha Asian Games in December this year and also winning the first gold medal in Korean swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympics have once again been revived. The “project to earn Park Tae-hwan an Olympic medal,” which is led by Kyunggi High School alumni, has also gained more significance.

kimsk@donga.com