Kim You-woon
A few days have already passed since the Sochi winter Olympic games ended. For the 20 days during the Olympics, everyone’s attention turned toward the Olympic games. However, I am not sure if Koreans are concerned about the games and athletes. It seems that most people’s concern was mainly about whether we get a gold medal or not. Many journalists in newspapers and Internet articles used headlines like, “could have been better,” “a sad record” or “a regretful loss” to the Korean athletes who did not win a gold medal. It is not even exceptional to athletes who won silver or bronze medals. Some athletes even apologized for not winning a gold medal. While watching all of these situations, I felt really bitter. What I want to ask is this: do you really care about the Korean athletes regardless of the Olympics? Do you know how much time they spent for practice? Do you know how much financial support they receive? Probably most of us do not know. Although some sports events are popular such as figure skating and short track, other events are thoroughly disregarded. Even popular events became even more popular because athletes have won a lot of gold medals. Personally this time, I was deeply impressed by the Korean women curling team. Before they first advanced to the Olympic games, I did not even know that curling was one of the events in the winter Olympics. However, once I saw their competition with the powerful Swiss women team, I could not take my eyes off of them. Though they lost the game in the end, their passion and cooperation were still enough to surprise me. Even the Swiss team said in their interview that the Korean team’s technique during the game was impressive. However, most of the Korean articles were quite negative about the failure, not trying to analyze the process of the game. Could we not just say any compliments to the athletes who did a good job in an unpopular event? We are still requiring all of our athletes to win gold medals, emphasizing the importance of results and thinking that it is natural for the country. I think it does not make sense at all to expect our athletes to win gold medals without constant and sincere concern. In addition, even if we generally care a lot about the Korean athletes, we do not have any right to force them to win gold medals. Nobody can predict the result of a game. Even if an athlete is skillful enough, he or she may lose a game because of bad physical and mental condition or unfortunate circumstances. There is no athlete who intentionally do not do their best in each game. If our athletes get good results in games, that is, of course, valuable to all of us. However, they should not be the slaves who always have to devote themselves and offer gold medals to our country. I want to say “Thank you for all the efforts that you have made and the efforts you are making even now for the Sochi winter Olympic games. I am proud of you all!” to the Korean athletes.
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