Thursday, February 25, 2010

Inevitable -- Kim Yu-na Wins Gold

Look up the word "inevitable" in the dictionary. You know what you'll find? No, not a picture of Kim Yu-na. That's just ridiculous. But you will find the definition of the word "inevitable," which is exactly how Kim's chances of winning gold could be described after her short program earlier in the week.



Not only that, but she broke her own world record with a new score of 228.56 points. Yes, that's 18 points higher than her old world record.

Many of the articles about her talk about all the pressure she faced being the favorite. I understand that that pressure can be great. I was the kind of chokers in high school. And Canada's men's ice hockey team hasn't been dealing too well with the pressure thus far. That being said, they are in the semi-finals and look to be a lock to make that gold-medal game.



But the pressure isn't nearly as much as people think, in my opinion. If she were skating in Korea, then I could understand. But not only was she on the other side of the world, but she was on her home training soil. She spends at least 3/4 of the year now living and training in Canada. So she probably had a 3-hour plane ride to get to the games. Other Korean athletes training in Korea faced anyway from 20-30 hours, depending on layovers.

Regardless of my rant about the pressure, she's cleary the greatest skater of this current generation, and warrants discussion already among the best of all time. Congrats to Kim, even though I'll hear about it from every Korean I meet until I stab myself and end my misery.

2 comments:

Brian said...

Look up "inevitable," I think.

Fatsy Le Shaft said...

You got me here and on Facebook. Now I feel twice as dumb. Haha. Thanks for noticing that.