Miki Ando defeats Kim Yuna (UPDATED)

Japan's darling of skating Miki Ando, showing her disdain for all the South Koreans who donated tens of millions of dollars to help the victims of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, defeated the reigning ice queen Kim Yuna at the Figure Skating World Championship in Moscow.

"I was skating for Japan," Ms Ando said. And we all know exactly what that means.

Miki Ando throws up a little in her mouth when asked
by a reporter what she thinks of Korea.

Seriously, though, mucho congratulations to Ms Ando, who is an incredible skater. The friendly rivalry between Kim Yuna and the top Japanese skaters (to include Mao Asada) makes it all the more interesting to watch (and yeah, it is interesting). I'll go on record as saying it's a little less fun if Kim Yuna wins every time.

Moreover, this kind of thing might be enough to lift the spirits of a lot of people in Japan. The Tohoku tragedy was a nightmare in the middle of a malaise, something that is palpable when talking to young and old from Japan, and I so want for Japanese to rise up and see a bright future on the horizon.

UPDATE:
Kim Yuna has announced through her agent that she will donate the $27,000 prize money from her silver medal finish to UNICEF's relief efforts in Japan. Class act all the way.

When in Rome, do as the Koreans do

Apparently Apolo Ohno has learned more from his South Korean coach and competitors than just skating technique: after being disqualified, he is whining about the bad, jingoistic judges who disqualified him:

There was no grand finale, no gold medal – and sadly, no class from Apolo Anton Ohno as the final moments of his career ticked away Friday night.

Ohno went down as the greatest short-track speedskater in history when he took what are likely to be his final Olympic laps here, but he did nothing for his reputation with a needless and baseless swipe at a celebrating host nation.

By lashing out at the judges who disqualified him from the 500-meter final, Ohno ended his Olympic career much as it began in 2002: with controversy.

“You know, it is the head Canadian referee [Michel Verrault] out there,” said Ohno, with a smirk and a shrug. “And there were two Canadians in the race.”

Ohno, who could have skated into the sunset simply thankful to be adorned with yet another medal-gaining Olympic Games, instead offered remarks that were unfair and unfounded, that came across as an attempt to take some sheen off a truly golden night for Canada.

When did anyone ever expect class from the smugly self-satisfied Apolo Ohno?

I feel bad for Sung Si-bak (the guy in dark blue up above), who spilled yet again when he was somewhere in the vicinity of Ohno. The poor guy can't get a break... except for a leg, a knee, or a toe.

[HT to LastnameKim, even though I had to dig up the link myself]

Ohno gets disqualified after he trips up other skaters

Well, karma has been noticing Ohno lately, enough that he hasn't yet been able to stretch that most decorated winter Olympian record yet:

Short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno didn't add another medal to his collection Friday night, when he was disqualified for pushing in the final of the men's 500 meters at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Ohno appeared to push Francois-Louis Tremblay of Canada on the final turn, causing Tremblay and South Korean skater Sung Si-Bak to fall.

My understanding is that the judges took quite a few minutes trying to decide whether to disqualify Ohno, or to strip the Team Korea of every medal ROK athletes have ever won at the winter Olympics. It was a close call, but Jim Hewish had gone out for a nosh, so they went with the former.

In the end, Canada's Charles Hamelin won the gold, Sung won the silver, and Tremblay the bronze.

Ohno has one more chance to win a medal later tonight, in the men's 5,000-meter relay, during which he will employ a three-pronged strategy of throwing up his hands in horror whenever someone passes him, using a crowbar on the knees of his worst skating threat right before the race, and dongchim.

The LAT on Kim Yuna: "A champion for all time"

If you can stomach any more of this, the Los Angeles Times has a piece on the enduring greatness of Kim Yuna:

The skater and her coach were in a car going from post-competition doping control to a press conference that would be aired live in South Korea, where half the country's 48 million people already had watched TV broadcasts of their national hero becoming their first Olympic figure skating champion.

During the 20-minute ride, Kim and Orser simply could have sat back and looked at the gold medal she won three hours earlier with a performance of record-breaking, mind-boggling quality. Instead, as Orser sat in a front seat and Kim in the back, they leaned together to study details on the score sheet, talking about places to improve in her next competition, the March World Championships.

That discussion speaks to the particular greatness Kim displayed in the Olympics.

If, at age 19, she already has joined the sport's legends, it will owe not only to Kim's lighter-than-air grace in her movements on the ice and her huge jumps but also to Team Kim's grounding in the demands of figure skating's scoring system.

Never have athlete and artist been more perfectly balanced than they are with Kim. Never has a skater with both those qualities displayed them so flawlessly in the sport's most important competition.

"I always wanted to be Olympic champion and do clean programs," Kim said. "This was the first time I have done both programs clean, and I am very joyful it was at the Olympics."

That achievement alone sets her apart from many of the sport's greats, especially because they had to do far fewer defined elements in a four-minute program that used to embody its title: free skate.

I forgot where I read it, but someone in one of the K-blogs made a point that Kim Yuna represents a worthy goal for so many Korean girls and women now: She achieved what she did through her own hard work, her wits, her intelligence, her perseverance, etc., not a trust fund, a rich husband, or going to the right school (I'm paraphrasing).

As she alludes to above, this was a victory devoid of controversy or even mistake: No one (except for a few disgruntled Mao Asada fans whose lack of class does not represent Japan as a whole) questions that she earned it. That makes it kinda neat by itself, even if she weren't a "queen" of skating: It's a demonstration that thoroughgoing attention to detail and doing things the right way (versus cutting corners to get ahead, is the path to good things (although it might add fuel to the fire for South Korea's we-must-be-perfect-or-else-we've-failed crowd).

That guy really has it in for South Korean skaters

I'm a little late to this controversy, having reported on the loss, but not the ensuing anger. You'll have to forgive me: In the wee hours of the morning, when I saw an email with the news headline, "South Korean female trio DQed in Vancouver," I thought it was spam for a porn link and I deleted it.

As of this morning, I have not read any blog entries on Jim Hewish, the Australian judge who disqualified both South Korean Kim Dong-sung in the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and now the ROK women's relay team, except for this post at The Marmot's Hole, so my thoughts are my own and I don't know if anyone else has already expressed this.

Assuming for a moment that there is no possibility that the guy really is on the take or really has it in for South Korean dominance of skating (like some do for Korean ladies pro golf), then South Korea's hardcore netizenry may be entirely to blame for this one. The call was one that, according to the link The Marmot provided, could have gone either way, but the orgy of hate unleashed by the hardcore super comment tribe and their hacker buddies in 2002 forced his hand in Vancouver: Were Mr Hewish to have sided with the ROK team this time, he would have left himself open to accusations of caving in against his judgement.

Shame on you. The chickens have come home to roost.

And a special notice to prosecutors in South Korea: take the full force of the law and go after anyone who broke the law by publishing private information about Mr Hewish. Show that you're serious that cyberstalking is bad no matter what the reason.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have whales to watch. No Daily Kor today, kiddies. You haven't earned it.

UPDATE:
Jim Hewish is now under police protection at the Vancouver games. His house in Sydney is under armed guard, too. He took this serious enough that he bowed out of officiating the race where Ohno was disqualified, but he did watch it in the stands.

Icing on the cake

Would South Korean fervor about Kim Yuna not exist or simply not be as, well, fervent if there were no Mao Asada or Miki Ando (or even Mirai Nagasu)? Is the existence of Japanese competitors and the prospect of beating them a major factor in Kim Yuna's runaway popularity in South Korea? Without Mao as a rival, would Kim Yuna not have made $8 million last year?

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times seems to think so:

Wearing a sassy black dress, twisting and leaping to a medley of spy thriller songs, the queen of South Korean figure skating is continuing a quest her countrymen hope is no mission impossible:

Not just to win, but to beat the Japanese in the process.

Kim Yuna, the pouting 19-year-old monarch-on-ice, is poised to win South Korea's first Olympic gold medal in figure skating -- a feat that for many countrymen would prove to be a satisfying athletic and political victory over their Asian neighbors.

Because when it comes to sports competitions against Japan, their colonial-era overlords from 1910 to 1945, Koreans wear their fiercest game faces -- whether on a baseball or soccer field, or even within the graceful realm of the figure-skating rink.

"With South Korea versus Japan, it is all about one-sided nationalism," said Shin Kwang-yeong, sociology professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. "Of course, Japan's colonization of Korea and emotions between the two countries are instilled in sports.

"It's a phenomenon based on South Korea's group perception about its traumatic history. If you do not win a gold medal, other medals are not satisfying."

And medals are sweeter if snatched from a Japanese competitor.

I know I'm swimming against the current of K-blog public opinion here, but I think Mr Glionna is betraying a facile inspection that is so common in anglophone analysis of Korea as to be cliché: If some issue or incident involving Korea can be even remotely connected with Japan, then Korea's longstanding han must be a major factor if not primary cause of whatever that is.

True, the loudest voices among the netizenry may bring up such things — whether it's the much maligned Apolo Ohno being half-Japanese or the President of Korea being someone trying to make nice with Japan and who was born in Japan and lived there for five years — but for the general population, I submit, the Japan factor is merely icing on the cake if it's something being considered at all.

Let's go back to my original questions: Would Kim Yuna be loved any less, would she be any less possible or any less rich, if she had no Japanese competitors? I submit that the answer is a resounding no. There is no small dose of national(istic) pride in support for her — she is going to get a gold for our country and serve as a shining example of Korean skill, ingenuity, and coolness — but that patriotic passion would be there whether her primary opponent were Japanese or Jamaican, American or Armenia, Chinese or Chilean, North Korean or South African.

Let me demonstrate. Imagine that through a series of small miracles that the Korean national team were able to make it into the group of 16 at the World Cup in South Africa. Then through a series of luck and more miracles, into the final eight, then the final four, and eventually we see South Korea in the actual final game of the World Cup.

Anyone in South Korea in 2002 knows that the ROK would be going so crazy over this that the manufacturing base would virtually shut down for two weeks and the entire country would be a giant party zone full of hyped up people going nuts with the prospect of being the best team in the world in soccer. The entire country would be on edge like never before with each pass in the final game, with screams resonating across the peninsula with each near miss. The screams following a goal by Korea, Republic of would be deafening.

Okay, now imagine the final game is, through other miracles, being played against Japan. Would the anticipation and anxiety be greater? Probably some, but replace Japan with Brazil and there would still be national insanity. In 2002, no matches were played against Japan, but the country was still at a fever pitch.

Icing on the cake. But not the cake.

So while the Korea-versus-Japan aspect would be an additional element, it would be a superfluous element. And it's sloppy and lazy for anglophone reporters to use it as a standby. Let me use another illustration: let's imagine that there were a lot of public gloating in South Korea about Toyota's woes instead of the subdued response in which a lot of people worry that Hyundai and Kia are in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I kinda situation (and I have no doubt some people are gloating, as they are in the US as well).

It would be easy for Mr Glionna or some K-bloggers to attribute that sentiment not just to national pride about Hyundai and Kia not having such problems (anymore), but to this stick-it-to-former-colonizer attitude that, in their minds, always prevails. And people would read that and nod their heads in agreement, going, "Yeah, South Koreans really hate the Japanese."

But here, where in actuality there isn't much of such gloating at all, we don't see a soul-searching discussion of why South Koreans aren't hating on the Japanese when they have the perfect opportunity to do so. Because that would mean dismantling this facile notion and putting its parts in a museum somewhere.

A few paragraphs back, I mentioned people who bash President Lee Myungbak for his pro-Japan geopolitical stance by pointing out that he was born in Japan (Osaka, to be precise). Yes, there really are such people (Google 이명박+일본놈 or some such), but they do not represent the norm at all. In fact, President Lee's Japanese-ness rarely is brought up in criticism. Yet it would be right there for Mr Glionna or K-bloggers to again talk up South Korea's eternal hatred of Japan if President Lee ever were the target of many South Koreans' wrath over something Japan-related.

ROK women's skating team disqualified after coming in first

The following article explains what happened, which was protested by the South Korean coaches:

VANCOUVER, Feb. 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korean women's team was disqualified in the 3,000 meter relay short track event on Wednesday for impeding a Chinese player.

South Korean team -- Lee Eun-byul, Park Seung-hi, Cho Ha-ri and Kim Min-jung -- raced for five consecutive Olympic gold medal in the event, finished first in the relay event at the Pacific Coliseum, leaving China in second and Canada in third.

But the referees declared South Korea's disqualification, saying that a South Korean skater pushed a Chinese skater in the final lap, lifting the China to the first place. South Korean team officials strongly protested the controversial decision, but the referees did not reversed it.

As a result, Canada won silver and the Unites State took bronze.

Yonhap has been writing this story in waves. First there was a one-line report, now there is this detailed story above, and eventually the refined (i.e., proofread) story will appear. Yonhap is usually pretty good at presenting well edited articles, so I'm guessing the writer was trying to get this out as quickly as possible.

Lee Seung-hoon got gold when the Dutchman in front of him was disqualified, so I hope these lumps will be taken in the spirit of "win some, lose some" (judging decisions, that is). Get psyched up for Kim Yuna to perform instead.

Where are they now: Kim Dong-sung

Since the ROK-Ohno rivalry is fresh again, I thought I'd do a little focus on the person who was disqualified and lost his gold medal to Ohno, which sparked the anti-Ohno hate fest at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games.

That would be Kim Dong-sung:

After playing a reluctant role in one of the most controversial races in Olympic history seven years ago in Salt Lake City, South Korean speedskating star Kim Dong-Sung vowed never to return to the United States.

Kim was in the middle of celebrating what he assumed was his gold medal victory in the 1,500 meters when he learned he had been disqualified for interfering with U.S. star Apolo Anton Ohno, who ended up receiving the first-place medal. Kim was so upset he needed oxygen in his hotel room that night. The South Korean delegation challenged the result, then threatened to boycott the Closing Ceremonies. Some 16,000 angry e-mails from South Korea crashed the U.S. Olympic Committee's computer system.


But there he was this week at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Arlington, wearing baggy jeans, a navy coat and gold-bladed skates, chasing speedsuit-wearing American children around the ice during an evening practice session. "Push, push, push!" he exhorted.

Kim's life since the 2002 Winter Games has unfolded with all of the unexpected twists of a typical final in short-track speedskating. Agonized at hearing the U.S. national anthem seven years ago, Kim now wants to ensure it is played. He aspires to create a U.S. Olympic champion in the Washington suburbs.

Ten of Kim's students will compete next weekend at the sport's national age-group championships in Midland, Mich., a competition that will help Kim evaluate his students' progress and his own proficiency in a profession he didn't consider pursuing until just more than two years ago. That's when a Maryland speedskating parent who heard he was in the country called him up and invited him to coach.

"I came here not as a player, but as a person looking for a future career," Kim, 28, said partly through an interpreter before the start of Tuesday's training session. "I didn't even bring my skates."

Now he doesn't plan to leave.

"My goals have changed," he said. "I want to make a national team member out of one of my young kids."

Sorta unexpected, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, it's good to see Mr Kim put all that nastiness behind him. He may or may not have justification to have been bitter at the time, and it may or may not have been controversial, but for him there's no reason to keep dwelling on it. I'm happy to see he's doing some good with his talent for skating.

Kim Yuna performs adequately in Vancouver

I didn't watch it, me being a jinx and all, but I knew right away something big happened because Ms Kim Yuna's form was splattered all over the news sites, including the New York Times above.

Indeed, she not only came out on top in the women's figureskating short program, she set a world record with her score. But the medal work is not over, and we'll have to see how she does tomorrow (and then I'll watch it online after that... the whole jinx thing).

UPDATE (two days later):
Kim Yuna has won the gold!

South Korea's Lee Seunghoon wins gold in men's 10,000-meter after Dutchman disqualified

As Ohno supporters might say, a gold is a gold (as I said of Ohno being a good skater who deserves his medal, "a silver is a silver"). Lee Seunghoon [Yi Sŭng•hun, 이숭훈] was four seconds behind Sven Kramer, but he did come in ahead of everyone else (setting a new Olympic record) and he avoided being disqualified.

And just as Kim Dongsung threw his country's flag down in 2002, the disqualified Dutch skater "threw his goggles down in disgust."

From the AFP:

Korea's Lee Seung-Hoon was gifted the men's 10,000m speed skating gold medal on Tuesday after Dutchman Sven Kramer was sensationally disqualified after coming over the line first.

Russia's Ivan Skobrev took the silver and another Dutchman Bob de Jong won the bronze.

Kramer, who won 5,000m gold last week, was the hot favourite and he lived up to his billing by powering around the Richmond Oval more than four seconds faster than Lee in the gruelling race.

He thought he had won but a lane infringement with eight laps left saw him disqualified, ending his dream of completing the first golden treble by an Olympic speedskater since Norway's Johann Olav Koss in 1994.

Kramer, the 23-year-old son of two-time Dutch Olympic speedskater Yep Kramer, threw his goggles down in disgust and was a forlorn figure as Lee celebrated an unexpected victory.

Kramer also blamed his own coach:

"Usually, I don't want to blame anyone else, but this time I can't do anything else. I wanted to go on the outer lane then just before the cone Gerard shouted 'inner lane,' I thought he's probably right and went to the inner lane," he said.

"At first I thought my skates passed the cone on the wrong side, I will be disqualified. Then I noticed in the stadium something was wrong.

"You have to decide in a split second. Afterwards I should have gone with my own thoughts, but I was brought into doubt. This really sucks. This is a real expensive mistake."

There may be some truth in what he's saying, so I'm not about to write that off as unsportsmanlike activity. As I said before, the biochemical rush going through these skaters when they finish provides reasonable cover for their post-race tantrums:

Lee Dong-sung, back in the 2002 Olympics, was unsportsmanlike for throwing down the t'aegŭkki when it turned out he got disqualified after coming in first in Salt Lake. I'll excuse him, though, based on the undoubtedly high level of adrenaline pumping through his veins just then. Some will say I'm a hypocrite, because I'm not willing to accept the same excuse for police officers who shoot suspects they've chased into an alley, but come on, there's a difference between throwing down a flag and putting twenty-five bullets in someone carrying an ice cream cone you thought was a rocket launcher.

No doubt some will see hypocrisy in Lee happily accepting this gold medal, but I don't think it is, for a variety of reasons. First, Lee Seunghoon was not (to my knowledge) one of those saying Ohno was undeserving. Second, Lee Seunghoon was not instrumental in Mr Kramer getting disqualified in the way that Ohno was instrumental in getting Kim Dongsung disqualified so he could win the gold in 2002. Rather different cases, methinks.

Of course, I have yet to see the race, and I don't know if I would recognize a foul by Lee if he'd made one, but from what I have to work with now, I don't think there's hypocrisy.

Gold rush

Just two days shy of her twenty-first birthday, South Korea's Lee Sanghwa won the gold medal in the women's 500-meter speedskating event. In a sport with very small margins of victory, she was only 0.05 seconds faster than the silver medalist, Jenny Wolf of Germany.

Not only is Lee Sanghwa the first South Korean woman to medal in Olympic speedskating, she's the first Asian female to do so. Good on you, Ms Lee.

While I'm at it, here's the NBC Olympics site's pre-Olympic rundown of South Korea's medal prospects.

Apolo Ohno: "At the end of the race I was hoping for another disqualification kind of like what happened in Salt Lake City."

You stay classy, Apolo Ohno.

Irrespective of the guy's history of being a spoiler when it comes to Olympic skating events involving Koreans, I never liked Apolo Ohno. Maybe it's him throwing races (allegedly) to help his friends qualify at the expense of others. He just exudes a smugness that just rubs me the wrong way.

The self-satisfied little jerk is all over the online ads these days, too, which just makes matters worse.

Anyway, it's things like the comment in the title that just reaffirm my gut feeling toward the guy. It came in relation to a crash at the end of the 1500-meter race that cost two South Korean skaters the silver and the bronze, but at least Lee Jungsu managed to get the gold. Expect national hero worship for years to come, Mr Lee.

UPDATE:
You can watch the NBC.com video of the race here (sorry, embedding apparently not possible). At about 5:35 or so, watch attention whore Apolo Ohno exude more class as he screams during the post-race television interview of his teammate, J.R. Celski, who overcame a serious injury to come in third.

UPDATE 2:
And here's the part where Ohno whines about not getting the gold. It's annoying when Korean athletes do it about Ohno, and it's annoying in the vice versa. "We wuz robbed!" talk so often just makes you look bad. You got lucky and won a silver, so just suck it up and shut up. Ditto with Lee Jungsu about your gold.

UPDATE 3:
Here's a roundup of my thoughts (so far) on this controversy and others related to the Korea-versus-Ohno rivalry.