After quarrel, skaters to have just one coach

The Korea Skating Union said yesterday both its male and female short-track athletes will train under a single coach in order to prevent clashes between team members, following a quarrel between a skater’s father and an official.
One coach and one director will head both the men’s and the women’s teams for the 2006-2007 season, the skating union announced yesterday.
Ahn Ki-won, the father of short-track skating star Ahn Hyun-soo, slapped a coach Tuesday at Incheon International Airport, claiming there was an effort to deny his son the world title.
The short track team was returning from the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Minneapolis, Minn., where Jin Sun-yu and Ahn both defended their overall World Short Track titles in the women’s and men’s categories.
The younger Ahn trains under coach Park Se-ju, who is in charge of the women skaters; all the other male skaters are trained by Song Jae-geun.
During the welcoming ceremony, Ahn’s father said the Korean teammates and the coach of the men’s team worked against Ahn.
The father of the speed-skating star said his son called him from the United States, crying. “Korean players were worse than the foreign players in impeding Hyun-soo. In the 1,000-meter and 3,000-meter race, coach Song ordered other players to block him,” the senior Ahn claimed.
The skater’s father was restrained by Kim Hyung-beom, vice chairman of the Korea Skating Union, before the slapping occurred.
Ahn won the 1,000-meter race, but was disqualified in the 3,000-meter after impeding Lee Ho-suk, who was in front of him. Both skaters fell.
Ahn was also disqualified from the 500-meter race, which gave Lee a chance to win the overall title.
Lee only needed a top-three finish in the 3,000-meter race to become the champion, but he came in fifth. Ahn won the overall title for the fourth consecutive year.
Coach Song denied the accusations, saying that if he wanted to block Ahn, he would have done so on the 1,500-meter race as well. He said that as a coach, he wouldn’t tell other athletes to disrupt Ahn and that Ahn’s father was just overreacting.
Ahn wrote on his private Web site that he was very distressed by the flap. “There were many shameful things that happened and right now, no matter how I try to bear it, all I want to do is quit,” he said.

by Wohn Dong-hee