YONHAP NEWS

Sponsor or swimsuit to blame for Olympic gold medalist's loss?

By Kim Boram
SEOUL, July 28 (Yonhap) -- Even before the disappointment subsided of seeing South Korea's defending champion and Olympic gold medalist Park Tae-hwan fail to reach the finals at the World Championship in Rome, experts were pointing the finger at everything from his swimsuit to advertisers.

Park was hoped by most to grab his second consecutive gold in the 400-meter event at the world championship, even break the seven-year-old 3:40.08 record set by Ian Thorpe.

Park Tae-hwan

The 20-year-old instead finished 12th in the preliminary round of the event on Sunday with a time of 3:46.04, a far cry from his personal best of 3:41.86 set in the Beijing Summer Olympics last year and weak enough to send him out of the competition without reaching the finals.

   He also failed to advance to the 200-meter freestyle finals, showing an unimpressive record of 1:46.68. He had won bronze medal in the 2007 world championships and silver medal in Beijing with a record of 1:44.85.

   Some experts blamed Park for refusing to wear the new high-end swimsuits considered the best on the market now.

   Contrary to the craze for the polyurethane suits, credited with shortening the world records, the South Korean insisted on going with what he has. Among the competitors, Park was the only one who wore the outdated swim pants that exposed his bare torso.

   Park also seemed to admit the wrong choice.

   "I see that I was the only one who chose the old swim suit," he said after the 200-meter freestyle preliminary. "I will try to adjust to the full-length swimsuit after the tournament".
Others blamed Park's agency, which has allegedly been over-zealous in using the South Koreans' iconic status to rake in commercial profits.

   Park signed a lucrative contract with SK Telecom, the biggest telecommunication firm in South Korea, in October last year after his success at the Olympics. He has trained separately with an SK Telecom special team organized just for him, separately from the national team.

   The gold medalist has also spent considerable time shooting TV commercials and appearing in talk shows since the Olympics.

   Sports experts say these activities could have thrown Park off his focus in preparing for the global showpiece.

   As the icing on the cake, there was no swimming expert to manage Park's exercise schedule or health conditions in SK Telecom's special team. Many say Park needed a personal coach.

   "I know that the biggest problem is whether to name my coach. It's complicated." said Park.

   A month before the world championships, Park returned to the national sports training center. The national squad's head coach, Roh Min-sang, said in Rome that by that stage it was too late to fully prepare him for the world event.

   "He should have gone through some simulation tests, but we were pressed for time," said Roh, who has coached the swimmer since he was a boy. "It's necessary to control young players of his age. I think it would have been better for him to join the national squad and train with them full time."

   The pressure on the young swimming star also distracted him.

   "I felt the pressure more than I did in Beijing. It was difficult to cope with the attention and the expectation of the South Korean people," Park told reporters. "I was nervous when I raced. I can't believe that I was eliminated (in the 400 meter event)."

   Thousands of supporters had left supporting messages on an Internet portal, expecting Park to return home with gold medals and a world record. Local broadcasters aired documentaries about him and broadcast every competition he took part in.

   "All of us think that Park should win in every tournament," said Park Seok-ki, former national swimming coach. "We should (also) understand that he is working very hard."

   "We should comfort Park and encourage him," said Roh. "The main goal is to compete in the 2010 Asian Games and 2012 Olympics. I hope that Park will make another leap, learning lessons from the failures."

   brk@yna.co.kr
(END)