SPORTS
Page 8 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
March 5, 2018
Asians in American sports w Asian Americans in world sports
At the Olympics, winning silver and bronze is still a victory
AMAZING ACCOMPLISHMENTS. There
were many stories of success among silver and
bronze medallists at the PyeongChang Olympics.
After injuries hampered performances in the 2010
and 2014 Olympics, snowboarder Jiayu Liu of China
(top photo, left) earned a silver medal. In short-track
speedskating, Hwang Dae-Heon and Lim Hyo-Jun of
South Korea (bottom photo, left and right), won silver
and bronze medals, respectively.
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
he Winter Olympics have closed in
PyeongChang, South Korea, and as
always, the media paid far too
much attention to the gold-medal winners.
We forget that merely reaching the
Olympics is an accomplishment. In
addition, many of the silver- and
bronze-medal winners have amazing
stories of their own, tales of redemption
and first-time victories that are just as
sweet as those from the people standing on
the top step of the winner’s podium.
Take the 500-meter men’s short-track
speedskating final, for example. China’s
Wu Dajing had been untouchable
throughout the earlier rounds, never
trailing and setting a world record
reaching the final race. He was equally
unbeatable in the final, breaking his own
world record less than an hour after
setting it. It was China’s first-ever men’s
short-track gold medal, and it was well
deserved.
Finishing behind Dajing were Hwang
Dae-Heon and Lim Hyo-Jun of South
Korea. While this loss might have seemed
like a disappointment for them, it served
as redemption for Hwang, who had skated
with Lim in the 1500-meter speed-skating
finals earlier. And for Lim, who won gold in
that race, the 500m bronze was further
acknowledgement of his rising talent.
In the 1500m event, Hwang and Lim
stayed in the middle of a huge pack of nine
skaters in the early laps before both
surged to the front with nine laps
remaining. Sjinkie Knegt, a top-ranked
Dutch skater, took the lead back a few laps
later, but Lim passed him to retake the
lead with three laps to go. In the process,
however, Hwang collided with a skater
trailing him, sweeping them both into the
boards and out of the race.
Lim emerged with the 1500m gold, but
he helped Hwang redeem himself in the
500-meter event. After Dajing surged to
the front in that race, the two South
Korean skaters battled for second and
third, trailed closely by the formidable
Samuel Girard of Canada, who won gold in
the 1000m event a few days earlier. Lim
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AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
AP Photo/Gregory Bull
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slid into second place early on, but Hwang
soon overtook him, leaving Lim to hold off
Girard for the rest of the race as Hwang
earned his first Olympic medal.
It was the 18-year-old Hwang’s first
Olympics, but he is expected to collect
much more hardware in the future. Named
the 2017 Rookie of the Year by the Korean
Skating Union, Hwang has already won
three World Cup speed-skating events this
season. And at age 21, Lim Hyo-Jun has
won three World Cup events this season to
add to his two medals at this year’s
Olympics. We will see more from these
young Asian skaters in World Cup events
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to come.
In the snowboarding halfpipe event,
everyone talked about gold-medal winners
Shaun White and Asian-American Chloe
Kim. Kim’s strong scores had clinched the
victory for her even before her spectacular
final run, while White won gold only after
laying down an incredible final run of his
own.
But in a sport often dominated by
westerners, the silver medals in those
events were won by two significant Asian
athletes: China’s Jiayu Liu on the women’s
side and Japan’s Ayumu Hirano on the
men’s side.
Hirano is well-known among inter-
national snowboarders, so his silver medal
was not surprising. After all, only Shaun
White’s 97.75 score could beat Hirano’s
awesome 95.25-point performance, and
both runs featured back-to-back 1440s, or
four mid-air spins. Hirano acknowledged
White’s performance was “the best he’d
ever seen” as he fell one step short of the
top of the podium for the second straight
Olympics.
Despite this apparent disappointment,
Hirano has nonetheless had an inspiring
Hey Yeong-mi: South Korean
businesses join curling craze
Continued from page 5
crushed heavyweights Canada and
Sweden before beating Japan 8-7 in the
semifinals. It fell to Sweden 8-3 in the
finals. By then, the team members, with
their success and quirky nicknames based
on their favorite breakfast foods, had
become a sensation.
Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1
through 9 appear one time each in every row, col-
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Solution to
last issue’s
puzzle
Puzzle #76262 (Easy)
All solutions available at
<www.sudoku.com>.
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Give blood.
To schedule a blood donation call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE
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year. Less than a year ago, he was
competing at the 2017 U.S. Open when a
bad fall against the hard edge of the
halfpipe led to a sprained knee ligament
and liver damage. He was told that he
came within one centimeter of a
potentially fatal blow.
After a three-month rehabilitation,
Hirano resumed training and won first
place at two World Cup events and second
at a third event. At the 2018 X-Games in
January, Hirano nailed consecutive 1440s
followed by consecutive 1260s (three-and-
a-half midair spins) to win a gold medal.
So, while silver may have seemed like a
disappointment to Hirano, the 19-year-old
will have many more chances at
redemption, especially considering Shaun
White won his gold at age 31.
Similarly, Jiayu Liu’s silver medal was
China’s first medal of this Olympics, but
she has long blazed a snowboarding trail
for her fellow Chinese athletes. Liu won
the 2005 national championship at age 13,
then won the World Cup championship
just three years later.
While Liu went to both the 2010 and
2014 Olympics, injuries hampered her
performances, and she finished off the
medal podium both times. Despite falling
short of the gold in 2018, Liu knows
winning second place is just as inspiring.
“For Chinese people, having someone on
the podium for the Olympics is an honor,”
she said after her win. “It will be a huge
push for Chinese snowboard.”
There were many other stories of success
among silver and bronze medallists at the
PyeongChang Olympics. In the aerial
freestyle skiing event, China’s Zhang Xin
and Kong Fanyu won their first Olympic
medals when they took second and third
behind Hanna Huskova of Belarus. And
Maia
and
Alex
Shibutani,
the
Asian-American brother-and-sister ice
dancing “Shib Sibs,” won bronze medals in
2018, a huge improvement over their
ninth-place Olympic debut in 2014.
It’s popular in American sports to say
things like “Winning isn’t everything; it’s
the only thing” or “Second place is the first
loser.” But in a superlative competition
such as the Olympics, winning silver and
bronze is a huge accomplishment. This
year’s Olympics not only showed us many
such achievements, it also gave us a
glimpse of the star Asian athletes of the
future.
Michelle Wie wins
LPGA’s Women’s World
Championship in Singapore
SINGAPORE (AP) — Michelle Wie sunk
a lengthy putt from off the green on the
final hole to win the Ladies Professional
Golf Association’s (LPGA) Women’s World
Championship by one stroke.
Wie’s last LPGA tournament win was at
the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open.
With four players in contention to win
the tournament on the last hole at Sentosa
Golf Club, Wie separated herself from the
pack when she birdied the 72nd hole for a
final round of 7-under 65 to finish at
17-under 271.
Jenny Shin (65) made her only bogey of
the day on the last hole to finish in a
four-way tie for second at 16-under with
third-round leader Nelly Korda (71) and
Danielle Kang (70), who both missed birdie
putts that would have forced a playoff, and
Brooke Henderson (67).