Korean swimming star Hwang Sun-woo made his Olympic debut in Tokyo three years ago at 18, an age when most athletes, no matter how skilled they may be, don’t yet have a firm grasp on how to compete in such a big event.
In the men’s 200-meter freestyle, Hwang raced exactly the way you would expect a teenager in his first Olympics to. He jumped into the pool, swam like his hair was on fire for the early stretch, and inevitably ran out of gas down the stretch.
Three years later, Hwang, with a world title and two Asian Games gold medals under his belt now, believes he can apply lessons from Tokyo to Paris for this year’s Olympics.
“I learned so much from Tokyo. I had zero experience then and I had a lot of regrets afterward,” Hwang said Tuesday during the national team media day at the Jincheon National Training Center in Jincheon, some 85 kilometers southeast of Seoul. “I’ve been 스포츠 able to build on that, and gained a lot of experience at world championships and the Asian Games. That’s how I’ve become the swimmer that I am today. Tokyo was really important for my swimming career, and I want to be able to demonstrate my savvy this time and reach the podium.”
In Tokyo, Hwang won the 200m freestyle heats in the world junior record time of 1:44.62. But he was nearly a full second slower in the semifinals. Then in the final, Hwang was on a world record pace through the first 150m before finishing in seventh place in 1:44.68.