The Olympics Blog » South Korea

Sa Jae-hyouk Crashes Chinese Party

bill — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:37:00 +0000

Here’s something I should have blogged about earlier but haven’t. Well, it’s better late than never. This dude, dear readers, is South Korean Sa Jae-hyouk who crashed China’s party in the weightlifting competitions when he won the gold medal in the 77 kilogram category. China’s Li Hongli and Armenia’s Gevorg Davtyan settled for the silver and bronze respectively.

Photo credit: gettyimages via beijing2008

Olympic Games Results: Lady Archers Make it Three Golds for South Korea

bill — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 23:11:00 +0000

Forget that dandy elf Legolas of the Lord of the Rings, when it comes to archery these ladies [Park Sung-hyun, Yun Ok-hee and Joo Hyun-jung] are the real thing. Their precision in the archery range won them South Korea’s third gold medal in the Beijing Olympic Games. They beat the host team so maybe them American “bring their own baon/bread” athletes should thank these girls because if they didn’t win China will have seven gold medals by now.

Expect the Koreans to win more golds in the archery range.

Olympics Medal Results: Park Taehwan Makes it Two Golds For South Korea

bill — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Let’s add the name of swimmer Park Taehwan to South Korea’s list of Olympic heroes. He just won a gold in the 400 meter freestyle. He joins fellow countryman, Choi Minho, who earlier won a gold medal in judo.

Btw, all these hand actions by our Olympic champions remind me of the nursery rhyme that goes: I have two hands, the left and the right. Hold them up high…..

Photo credits: xinhua and ezra shaw/al bello via beijing2008

Male Olympic Hotties: Choi Minho

bill — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:34:00 +0000

Some of you are googling for “male Olympic hotties” so from now on I’m going to call every male Olympic gold medalist a “hottie” to get your traffic. [Evil, huh?] But, seriously, what’s hotter than a gold medal? Maybe a diamond medal but since they don’t make diamond medals, a gold medal is the hottest of them all. Anyone with an Olympic gold medal = hottie.

Anyways, you’ve already met, judoka Choi Minho, but here’s more pictures of him. My bet is that Korean school girls will soon ditch Rain and idolize this guy who, seemingly [but understandably in this instance], likes to cry.

He beat guys bigger than him? Go Choi Minho!

Photo credits: People’s Daily and beijing2008

Choi Minho Scores One Gold For South Korea

bill — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:53:00 +0000

Methinks those silly South Korean school girls should now end their obsession with Rain and focus their attention to judoka Choi Minho who won the first gold medal for South Korea. He’s got everything that matters: good looks and an Olympic gold medal. Does Rain have a gold medal? None. Nada. Zero.

And here’s another reason why you schoolgirls should like Minho: he believes in his parent’s dreams and these dreams do come true. From monstersandcritics:

Minho later revealed that his parents had recently dreamed of a big moment.

‘I want to tell my mother. Before I came to Beijing my mother had a dream that a lot of people came to our house to say congratulations to Minho. My father said he also had a dream, that ‘the sun shone from his heart.’

‘I can’t believe that the dreams have come true,’ said Choi, who improved from his bronze medal finish 2004 in Athens.

Photo source: beijing2008

Richer Countries, More Medals?

bill — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:59:00 +0000

Do we really need a study to tell us that richer countries win more Olympic medals? My mom will tell you that such a study is a waste of resources because the answer will obviously be, “Of course richer countries win more Olympic medals.”

Now, the good folks at the Lingnan University in Hongkong obviously disagree with my mom (re: the usefulness of such study) so they set out to do an “econometric analysis of the Olympic Games“. They whipped out their calculators, pored over Olympic medal records, examined the different countries’ material wealth, did their statistical analysis thing, and came up with the following conclusion:

The results of the study show that population and income do indeed have a substantial effect on the number of Olympic medals won.

There’s really no need to translate that but we will “translate” it anyways because we want to, here it goes: “Richer countries with more people win more Olympic medals.”

So maybe my mom only got it half right. Not all rich countries win more medals. They also have to have more human resources, i.e., athletes, competing for them.

By the way, the really interesting part of the study as far as The Olympian Blog is concerned are the following medal predictions:

* that China will increase its medal haul by 14% in the 2008 Beijing Olympics but it will remain in second place behind the United States

* that Japan and South Korea will have fewer medals compared to their medal harvest in the 2004 Olympic Games

This is interesting because we will soon see in August if the Lingnan U folks got it right. We’ll keep you posted.