uPtoWnNY said:

me either

(Seattle)


Ohno becomes most reviled athlete in South Korea

By JEAN H. LEE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


USA's Apolo Anton Ohno leads the pack during the sixth heat of the men's 1000m short track skating competition at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

SEOUL, South Korea -- Apolo Anton Ohno may be feted at home for his Olympic feats, but he's better known in South Korea as the "king of fouls."

The American short-track speedskater, who goes up against the South Koreans again when he races for a historic seventh Winter Olympics medal on Saturday, may well be the athlete South Koreans hate the most.

One company once sold toilet paper emblazoned with Ohno's face: Ohno joyfully winning the gold, Ohno kissing his medal, Ohno laughing. One video game features an Ohno character you can shoot in the head, and to call something "Ohnolike" is to deride it as a dirty trick.

The bad blood goes back eight years to the Salt Lake City Olympics, where South Koreans believe Ohno stole the gold from Kim Dong-sung, who finished first in the 1,500-meter race but was disqualified for blocking. Ohno, then a teenager competing in his first Olympics, threw up his arms as he tried to pass Kim, as though to cry foul.

As Ohno stepped up to claim his gold, his joy only sealed South Koreans' disgust for an athlete lambasted as ungracious and unsportsmanlike. Thousands of angry anti-Ohno e-mails shut down the U.S. Olympic Committee server for nine hours.

Hatred of Ohno is said to have fueled anti-American sentiment back then, and it doesn't help that his father, Yuki, was born in Japan, the nation that colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. South Koreans try to trounce Japan as often as possible on the playing field, and Ohno is not exempt.

The animosity toward Ohno grew so heated that the entire American short-track team withdrew from a World Cup event held in South Korea in 2003, citing death threats against Ohno. In 2005, the athlete traveled in South Korea, reportedly under the guard of police.

Last year, with tensions appearing to simmer down, Ohno chose to make the trip for a World Cup event and was roundly booed by the crowd in the coastal city of Gangneung. And when a South Korean won gold and Ohno was disqualified, the audience roared and cheered with approval.

Ohno, older and wiser, shrugged off the booing. And he managed to earn the crowd's grudging respect with a clean skate later in the competition, drawing applause for an undisputed gold medal finish.

South Koreans are possessive and prickly about short-track speedskating, until now the country's best Winter Olympics event. The Asian nation of 49 million routinely churns out Olympic medalists in the short track, and two coaches on the U.S. short-track speedskating team were born and raised in South Korea.

At these games, the South Koreans have emerged as a surprise force not only on the short track but also on the long track. South Korea has five medals so far, one of them a gold to Ohno's silver.

The traditional rivalry between Ohno and the South Koreans flared up again in that race, the 1,500 meters. Three South Koreans were in the lead as they rounded the last turn, but two crashed out, allowing Ohno to slip across the finish line in second.

Incensed gold medalist Lee Jung-su criticized Ohno as "too aggressive" in a post-race news conference.

"Ohno didn't deserve to stand on the same medal platform as me," he told Yonhap. "I was so enraged that it was hard for me to contain myself during the victory ceremony."

South Korean broadcaster SBS posted a clip online from the semifinal with a caption saying it shows Ohno "pushing" Lee.

"I understand that in sports, you naturally want to win. But sports competitions should be won through fair play," Jung Kyung Kim, a 21-year-old college student, said in central Seoul on Friday.

Ohno called the final a "crazy race" full of bumping and grabbing. He also admitted he had been hoping to capitalize on a South Korean mistake.

"At the end of the race, I was hoping for another disqualification, kind of like what happened in Salt Lake City," Ohno said.

Still, Ohno later offered his congratulations to Lee in a Twitter post. "Wow Koreans are strong as always," he added.

The rivals will have a chance to put their trash-talking to the test this weekend. Ohno, Lee and the two who crashed in the 1,500, Lee Ho-suk and Sung Si-bak, will compete Saturday in Canada to qualify for the 1,000-meter final.

If he wins, Ohno will become the most decorated American in Winter Olympics history.

But at least one blogger hopes to see him fall flat on his face: "He should fall down on the ice and have (figure skater) Kim Yu-na land on his disgusting face after she performs a triple axel."

july said:

Mach said:

july said:

"...Here's to the soft, the dumb and the lazy"

I'm enjoying the festivities in Vancouver as much as the next person, but aren't the Olympic athletes being a little bit insensitive to the rest of us?

First of all, I have a serious problem with Shaun White. He flies through the air like a superhero on my TV screen, then when he's done, he's all funny and charming and sweet in interviews. As if that weren't enough, the announcers go on to tell us all about how he has tons of money and his very own halfpipe in Colorado plus he's friends with Tony Hawk and his life is totally awesome. Does NBC really want to send the message that likable athletes who are pioneers in their sport are better than those of us who haven't done shit with our lives? I doubt it.

I also have a major beef with Lindsey Vonn, who insisted on making a huge spectacle of how fast she was going down that steep hill on her skies without falling once. How ridiculously insensitive was that to the woman who had a terrible wipeout on that exact same hill just minutes later?

But that wasn't enough for Vonn. Next, she had the audacity to shout happily and take off her helmet and unleash this torrent of long, blond hair, and reveal her beautiful face, which seemed to sneer directly at the rest of us at home, presumably for not being a sexy elite athlete like she is. This is exactly the sort of thing that fosters a climate of intolerance for sedentary people with bad hair.

And what's with Johnny Weir, all plucky and delightful and clever? Did you see how he just relished rubbing our gracelessness and lack of flair in our faces the other night during the free skate program? How dare he make us feel like the lumpy, useless heterosexuals that we are? What kind of message does this send to young people who can't ice skate and aren't attractive and don't have an original thought in their heads?


I hereby officially call on the IOC and NBC and the Olympic athletes themselves to refuse to perform sports or engage in interviews that in any way promote or endorse the kind of strength and determination and courage that could end up making talentless, clumsy kids and awkward, unlikable scaredy-cats and chubby old people feel bad about themselves. We need to send a very clear message that we are not going to tolerate the glorification of hard work and excellent coordination and charisma and intelligence, because such glorification inevitably incites low self-esteem and frustration among the lazy, the soft, and the deeply mediocre....

Conclusiastical remarks

Hopefully, some of the high-profile athletes in Vancouver will do a similar service to the old, the squishy and the dimwitted by adjusting their current campaign of shame against the unexceptional. Until they learn to play down their physical fitness and warmth and charm, though, they're going to do enormous damage to the morale of millions of regular, ugly, unfunny, stupid Americans. It needs to stop. Today, we draw a line in the snow and say: No more!

july said:

prb said:

What about curling? Now someone explain to me how THAT'S a sport, because I don't get it.

Okay I know that half of the reason that I watch the Olympics is for the wrong reason.

Case in point, did any of you see the bodies on the Bobsled teams. GOOD LAWD!!!!

....feel free to post pictures.....

Okay I know that half of the reason that I watch the Olympics is for the wrong reason.

Case in point, did any of you see the bodies on the Bobsled teams. GOOD LAWD!!!!

....feel free to post pictures.....

uPtoWnNY said:

As someone who is not a fan of any sport or playing any sport, I let a friend convince me to play in a tournament (my first time ever to play ).

I have to tell you, playing was a hell of a lot of fun...but you hurt bad after playing.

It's boring as all hell to watch but sooooo much fun to play.

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

YES I DID!
Same reaction . . . . .

SUPRMAN said:

There has to be a blog or website for those type of bods. Not really fat, just thick and strong.

:miguel feels faint: