Ice queen’ Lee Sang-hwa (34) won two consecutive Olympic speed skating 500m gold medals in Vancouver and Sochi before leaving the ice rink with a silver medal around her neck in PyeongChang 2018. In 2023, five years after that, Kim Min-seon (24, Uijeongbu City Hall) emerged as a new ice queen.
Kim Min-sun won the gold medal by beating 2nd place Vanessa Herzog (Austria) by 0.19 seconds with 37.90 seconds in the women’s 500m at the 5th round of the 2022-2023 season International Skating Union (ISU) World Cup held in Poland on the 11th. In short distances, even a difference of 10 to 20 cm makes a difference in rankings, and even a simple calculation shows that Kim Min-sun passed the finish line about 2.5 m ahead of Hair Choke. That’s how much Kim Min-sun’s race was overwhelming.
Kim Min-seon, who won all 500m in her World Cup 1st to 5th competitions this season, will challenge for the first ever single-season World Cup 500m crown in her last World Cup (6th) to be held this weekend. Kim Min-sun said, “I am excited to take on the challenge. She will show her good form in the remaining matches as well,” she said.
I became stronger after experiencing two setbacks
Kim Min-seon set a new junior world record (37.70 seconds) in 2017 when she was 18 years old, and also won the right to participate in the Pyeongchang Olympics. However, he suffered an unexpected back injury a week before the opening of the PyeongChang Games and finished in 16th place. After a year and a half of back rehabilitation and strengthening training, his pain gradually began to decrease. At this time, Kim Min-seon worked on mid-to-long distance training that allowed him to exert his strength for a long time. Due to his back injury, it was difficult to train to explode his strength, but it was an attempt to compensate for this with endurance and skating skills. 바카라
The back pain subsided when the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were only a year and a half away. After finishing 7th in Beijing, he focused on anaerobic capacity and physical training necessary for short-distance races last year. He is showing his skills to the fullest this season, which combines the effects of mid- and long-distance training and short-distance training. Jegal Seong-ryeol, head coach of Uijeongbu City Hall, said, “Competing for 1/100th of a second is an ice-speed sprint, but Kim Min-sun even beat the second place by 0.51 seconds.” ” he said.
Endurance is better than idealization
Kim Min-seon is often compared to her senior, Lee Sang-hwa, whose main sport is the same. Lee Sang-hwa was famous for the strength of his thigh muscles during his active career. He possesses the strength to exert explosive power in an instant. He has good quickness and agility.
Kim Min-sun is inferior to Lee Sang-hwa in the ability to increase power in a short moment, but has the endurance to maintain high speed for a long time. In the latter half of the race, there are many cases where the stamina falls and is reversed, but Kim Min-sun runs fast until the end.
She, Kim Min-seon, also has excellent skating skills, and she deserves to aim for good results in 1000m as well. She was the first Korean female athlete to win the 1000m silver medal at the 1st World Cup last November. He plans to develop her strength in the future and supplement her start, which was pointed out as a weakness.
The goal is gold at the Milan Olympics.
Until last season, the World Cup 500m was held twice in one event. Lee Sang-hwa won 7 consecutive victories from the 1st competition to the 1st race of the 4th competition in the 2013-2014 season World Cup, which was in its heyday, but failed to participate in 5 times from the 2nd to the 6th competition of the 4th competition and failed to achieve the overall crown. Other world-class players, such as Nao Kodaira (Japan) and Jenny Wolf (Germany), did not have a previous title.
On the other hand, from this season, like the 1000m, the 500m will be held only once in one competition, allowing more focus on the race. If Kim Min-sun wins the 6th World Cup to be held in Poland next week, she will become the first ever World Cup champion in one season. Min-sun Kim’s ultimate goal is to win the gold medal at the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics. Coach Jegal Seong-ryeol said, “This World Cup is also a process to reach the top in Milan.”