Lee fights pain for gold in taekwondo

South Korean taekwondo athlete Lee Young-yeol can play through pain. Just ask China’s Wang Hao. In the gold medal match in the men’s 72-kilogram (159 pounds) division, Lee beat Wang 7-0 less than two minutes into the second round when the referee stopped the contest. Lee, 21, was battling an injury sustained in an earlier semifinal against Hadi Saei Bonehkohal of Iran.

The semifinal win avenged Lee’s loss last April to Bonehkohal in the Asian Taekwondo Championships. After his semifinal, Lee limped off the mat. But after the injured area was taped, Lee was good to go. “My left knee was twisted, but I received some simple treatment,” Lee said. “The gold medal was in sight. What’s a little pain?” Bonehkohal had been strong against Koreans, but Lee was in gold-rush mode, injury or no. “My only goal was to get the gold medal,” said Lee, who will now set his sights on the World Championship and an Olympic gold medal in two years. In women’s taekwondo, Jin Chae-rin was upset in a quarterfinal by Thailand’s Chonnapas Premwaew in the 63-kilogram division. In men’s basketball, the Doha Korean team could be the first to go without an Asiad medal since 1958. The Korean men suffered their second loss in preliminary play, falling 68-62 to Jordan. Korean point guards Yang Dong-geun and Kim Seung-hyun were the only players to score in double- digits. The team shot just 32 percent from the floor. Coach Choi Bu-yung criticized his team after it snuck past Syria Wednesday. “This is not how basketball should be played, and these guys are driving me nuts,” Choi said. Said TV analyst Lee Choong-hee: “They’re giving up one-on-one battles too easily.” Since four of six teams in each group advance to the quarterfinals, Korea is all but assured of a spot in the knockout round. But with a 2-2 record and with its last group match against a tough Qatar team, Korea most likely will finish fourth in its group. Qatar, 4-0, has beaten both Jordan and Iran, which defeated Korea by 14 points earlier this week. In a worst-case scenario, the combination of a Korean loss and a Syrian win over Iran could force Korea out of the Asiad. Even if Korea stays alive as the fourth-place team, it most likely will face powerhouse China, certain to finish atop its group. Korea defeated China for the gold medal at the 2002 Asiad final, but this Korean squad is much younger and less experienced on the big stage. And there are signs of internal strife. One player, on the condition of anonymity, told the JoongAng Ilbo that Korea has struggled “not because the Middle East teams are good, but because we’re just not good enough.” In response, Choi lashed out: “There is someone running his mouth when he has made absolutely no contribution to the team. We don’t play basketball with our mouths.” Things don’t look much brighter in women’s basketball. Korea was upset by Chinese Taipei in the opening preliminary match, and must defeat Thailand to finish second in its group. In that case, the women would likely face China to open the knockout round. Since women’s basketball became a medal sport at the 1974 Tehran Asiad, the Korean women have missed the final only once, last winning gold in 1994 in Hiroshima. Elsewhere, the North Korea-South Korea showdown in women’s soccer went the way of the U.S. Civil War. The North routed the South 4-1 on two goals by Ri Kum-suk. North Korea, with a 3-0 record in the prelims, advances to the semifinals as Group B’s top finisher. South Korea also made the semis with a 2-1 record. The two Koreas could meet again in the gold medal match. North Korea, the top-rated Asian women’s team in FIFA rankings at No. 7, next faces eighth-ranked China. The South next meets Japan. “The North-South match is important because we get to be on the field together, regardless of who wins,” North Korean coach Kim Kwang-min said. “I hope we’ll field a unified team to compete together in an international match.” The two Koreas marched together in this Asiad’s opening ceremony. They have agreed in principle to field a unified team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics but remain at odds over how to select athletes for the joint squad. In men’s soccer, the North and South Korean men meet early tomorrow in a quarterfinal. Late last night South Korea added to its gold total, when Choi Jin-a won the women’s all-events final. The South Korea women added a silver in the five-player team event. by Yoo Jee-ho