Park Jang-hyuk feels he has more to offer after Beijing Games

Olympic Sports

Published: 04 Mar. 2022, 16:59 Updated: 04 Mar. 2022, 19:00

Park Jang-hyuk feels he has more to offer after Beijing Games

Park Jang-hyuk [KSOC]

Park Jang-hyuk races in his men's 1,500-meter quarterfinal during the short track speed skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Feb. 9 in Beijing. [AP/YONHAP]

Korea returned from the Beijing Olympics with two gold, five silver and two bronze medals. Both gold medals and three of the five silver medals coming from Korea’s strongest winter sport, short track.

One of those silver medals was won by Park Jang-hyuk, alongside teammates Hwang Dae-heon, Kwak Yoon-gy and Lee June-seo in the men’s 5,000-meter relay.

While part of the popularity of short track may come from the seemingly gravity-defying way the skaters manage to stay standing while constantly circling the ice at high speeds, sometimes that isn't the case.

Park took an unfortunate fall in the men’s 1,000-meter heats when Pietro Sighel of Italy crashed into him while trying to overtake with three laps left to go. The crash left Park spinning off across the ice where Wu Dajing of China skated into his hand. The collision resulted in an injury that required 12 stitches.

Yet despite it all, Park came back on the ice wearing a bigger glove than usual to win his very first Olympic medal.

Park discussed his first Olympics and his career so far in a phone interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on Wednesday. The following are edited excerpts.

From left to right: Hwang Dae-heon, Lee June-seo, Kwak Yoon-gy, Kim Dong-wook and Park Jang-hyuk celebrate after their second-place finish in the men's 5,000-meter relay at Capital Indoor Stadium at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Feb. 16. [NEWS1]

Q. How does it feel to be an Olympic medalist?

A. Since coming back from the Beijing Olympics, I was surprised that so many people recognize me. Now when I go outside, at least two or three people know who I am. It feels great to have fans, and that is when I realized that I am now an Olympian and a medalist.

However, I'm not especially happy with my results in Beijing. I wasn't able to fulfill my goals and I don't feel like I was successful.

The biggest disappointment for me was my performance during the individual races. I didn't get to give it my all in the 1,000 meters and 1,500 meters.

Now that I have my own fans and people who recognize me, I want to do better.

How did you prepare for the Olympics?

As short track skaters, we usually start training for the Olympics starting in June or July. Before that is our offseason, but I try to keep my weight training routine even during the offseason. I enjoy bowling a lot so I find some time to hit the bowling alley and meet up with friends.

I started preparing for the Olympics in June but other more seasoned athletes don’t need to train as much. They can get in shape in just two to three months, but most of us start in the summer.

As for my daily routine, I start training at six in the morning for two hours. Most people don’t know this but after eating breakfast, all athletes take a nap because it helps us get through the rest of the training.

Most athletes also skip lunch to get to practice around 1 p.m., but I don’t skip lunch. After lunch, our afternoon training continues until five or six in the evening. Then we eat dinner, take a shower and the rest of the evening is personal time.

Sometimes I play games with other athletes but most of the time I like to watch videos of other skaters. I’m working on my 500-meter race these days so I watch Wu Dajing’s races. Actually, my 500-meter form got a lot better since watching Wu’s races and trying to imitate what he does. I think it could be because we have similar physiques.

How do individual races and relays differ for you?

Since there is no need to coordinate with others for individual races, I make my own strategies and just prepare for that. But for relays, getting in sync with other players is the most important thing. Naturally, there is so much more to practice and strategize in a relay. But that's also why I think bad results leave us with four times the disappointment and good results give us more than four times the joy.

From left, Lee June-seo, Kim Dong-wook, Park Jang-hyuk, Kwak Yoon-gy and Hwang Dae-heon celebrate on the podium after winning the men's short track speed skating 5,000-meter relay silver medal at the Beijing Medals Plaza in Beijing on Feb.17. [AFP/YONHAP]

You were the first one up in the 5,000-meter men's relay. What was the strategy behind the order and what was the reason you went first?

The second skater is strategically the most important in the relay because they will also be the one to finish the race. So that second skater not only has to be incredibly quick but also have the ability to overtake toward the end of the race.

So an important part of the first skater's job is giving the the second player a good enough push.

Going into the Games, our biggest contender in the relay was Canada. The second skater in the Canadian team is light and quick and they used that to an advantage by placing a bigger, taller athlete as the first skater to give the second a strong push.

Our second skater, Kwak Yoon-gy, is also quick and light so it was either me or Hwang Dae-heon who would make a good No. 1 because we are the two tallest players on the team.

The third skater has to be able to take the speed up a notch without the boost of a strong push and Lee June-seo has that ability. So after practicing, Kwak decided that I should be his pusher in the relay. I was grateful because everyone knew that I had hurt my hand but still trusted that I would do a good job for the team.

Park Jang-hyuk, left, collides with Wu Dajing of China during the men's 1,000-meter quarterfinal at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing on Feb. 7. [XINHUA/YONHAP]

From hurting your hand during the race to the many crashes and controversies, did you struggle to handle the different situations that arose during the Olympics?

When I prepared for the Olympic Games, I tried not to think of it as the Olympics, but tried to think of it as any other competition.

But after the first World Cup series that took place in Beijing last year, we knew that this Olympics would be different and that the decisions would be tough. So we trained under pressure, preparing for a cleaner race than usual.

I especially had a hard time at the World Cup. It was my first time on the national team and the World Cup was terribly important to me because I wanted as much time on the Beijing ice as I could get. But I was disqualified in the first preliminary round in Beijing and I found some decisions hard to understand.

To tell you the truth, the actual Games were even tougher than we imagined. Then to make things worse, I hurt my hand badly during the race. From then on, I think I just started focusing on enjoying the experience to concentrate on doing my best amidst everything.

Park Jang-hyuk races in his heat of the men's 1,000 meters at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Feb. 5 in Beijing. [AP/YONHAP]

Do you have any routines or habits that help you keep the nerves from getting to you?

Honestly, I have never felt that. I don't get nervous ahead of races at all. I rather feel a sense of excitement and think that I want to start racing.

I actually try to stay as far as I can from jinxes or relying on luck. For example, if I had an unlucky race wearing a certain jacket, then rather than not wearing it for important races, I try to get rid of that jinx by wearing that same jacket in my next race.

Maybe my heart beats faster than usual just before starting the 500-meter race because the start is so important for that event, but even then I don't think I get jittery or nervous during or before races.

I've always thought that confidence was my biggest strength, but now that I have experienced the Olympics, I have learned that I need much more international experience on top of confidence.

What are your plans going forward?

First, we have the World Championships in mid-March, where I aim to get good results in individual races.

I should have joined the other teammates at the national training village today [Wednesday], but I can’t yet because I still need to make trips to the hospital to treat the injury to my hand. So my short term plan is to get back in shape quickly before the World Championships.

In the long term, I want to be remembered as someone who was the best at a specific technique. When I retire someday, I hope to be remembered as a short tracker who was the best in the world at one skill. Right now, I am working on my starts, especially for the 500-meter race. When people hear my name, it would be great if they could identify me as the short track skater who was the best at starts.

Why do you think you became a short tracker and what would you say is the appeal of the sport?

Why I became a short tracker is simple: I followed my sister to the ice rink when I was eight years old.

I found the sport okay and I wasn't bad, but I only got to truly appreciate the sport a decade later. Now I have come to think that short track is a sport that makes you strive for more and makes you grow. It is a very sensitive sport and we need to pay acute attention to every detail.

But as much as it is intricate and fastidious, I don't think there is any other sport like short track that makes you grow in the process of striving towards an immaculate race.

BY YUN SO-HYANG [yun.sohyang@joongang.co.kr]