Korean Swimmer’s Surge Stuns Japan

At the women’s 200m butterfly match held at the Aquatic Center in Doha, Qatar last year on December 4, everyone associated with the Japanese swim team could not hide their surprise at one particular Korean swimmer’s powerful strokes. This is because Japan had expected to easily clinch in the gold and silver medals with world ranking second place Yuko Nakanishi (age 26) and fourth place Yurie Yano (age 19) competing in the match, but a Korean named Choi Hye-ra (age 16, Bangsan Middle School) suddenly came out of nowhere and took first place in the preliminary heat.

Choi claims the silver medal-

Choi lost to Yano (2:09:08) and claimed the silver medal by coming in 0.56 second later at 2:09:64. Although Choi missed out on the gold, the fact that she pushed past the world’s second place Nakanishi (2:09:75) is itself encouraging. Moreover, it took Choi 0.82 second to react before taking off, which was far behind Nakanishi (0.71 second) or Yano (0.73 second), causing her to trail in fifth place until the 50m point. But she pushed forward steadily in the 100-150m section, and in the final 50 meters she swam with incredible speed to beat Nakanishi.

The 2 minutes 9 seconds 64 that Choi Hye-ra recorded on that day was the fourth Korean record that she had set in the 200m butterfly. Choi broke the previous seven-year standing Korean record (2:11:34) set by Cho Hee-yeon at the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games, by recording 2:11:11 at the Dong-A Swimming Competition on May 2005 and then shortened her record to 2:10:72 at the Kids’ Athletic Competition on June 2006. Choi moved on to shorten her record to 2:10:32 at the Pan-Pacific Championships in August and at the Asian Games broke the formidable wall of 2 minutes and 10 seconds to record 2:09:64.

Choi was weak when she attended pre-school, so her parents sent her to swimming lessons at the age of six. Choi did not have a big build but because of her competitiveness and stamina, her instructors suggested that she try competitive swimming, and enrolled her on the swim team at Bangsan Elementary School when she was in fourth grade. At the East Asian Swimming Competition Elementary Girl’s 50m butterfly, Choi claimed the silver, which was her first medal.

Youngest To Join National Team-

Choi’s continuous growth led her to be the youngest member ever to join the national swimming team in 2004 as a seventh grader in Bangsan Middle School, in order to prepare for a shift in generations before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The national team’s head coach Bang Joon-young (age 42) said, “Her strongest merit is that she is hard working. Her left and right power balance had some problems but she is improving daily with consistent weight training and balance correction at the Taeneung Training Center.”

“I was always concerned for Hye-ra because she joined the national team when she was in seventh grade and we had to spend a lot of time apart,” said Kim Myoung-sun (age 45), Choi’s mother. She looked pleased as she added, “I’m so proud of her when I see her work hard to improve herself on her own.”

jeon@donga.com