Taekwondo’s Next Big Thing Bursts onto Olympic Scene with Gold

PARIS, Aug. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Unlike many other athletes, Park Tae-joon, freshly crowned an Olympic taekwondo champion in Paris on Wednesday, doesn’t have pre-match rituals or superstitions.

The 20-year-old instead likes to give himself a positive pep talk. Messages such as “I can do this,” “I will get it done,” or “This is going to be fun” will float through his mind as he prepares for matches.

At Grand Palais in the French capital Wednesday night, Park spoke his first Olympic gold medal into existence.

Park won the gold medal by withdrawal over Gashim Magomedov of Azerbaijan after his opponent suffered an apparent lower body injury during the final of the men’s -58-kilogram event. Both had pulled off upsets in the semifinals to get to the grand stage, with Park knocking off world No. 1 from Tunisia, Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi, and Magomedov beating the defending champion from Italy, Vito Dell’Aquila.

Park took a 2-0 lead with a kick to the body when the match was only six seconds old, and Magomedov suffered his injury a few seconds later when the two athletes’ legs collided with each other.

Magomedov threw in a towel in the second round but Park’s dominance was such that he could have won the match by final score if Magomedov had been healthy.

The anticlimactic finish notwithstanding, this gold medal represented the latest step in the development of a young athlete not yet fully formed, with the best days still ahead.

Park first turned heads in October 2022, when he won a World Taekwondo Grand Prix title in -58kg in Manchester, England, as an 18-year-old high school senior. He defeated the 2021 Olympic gold and silver medalists, Dell’Aquila and Jendoubi, en route to the top.

Then in June 2023, Park soared to his first world title in the -54kg division.

In the Olympic trials in February this year, Park edged out Jang Jun, the 2021 Olympic bronze medalist and former world champion, for the ticket to Paris. Park had lost all six previous meetings against Jang prior to that victory.

This run of success gave Park a healthy dose of confidence, though one might also say it was Park’s confidence that had allowed him to be successful in the first place.

“My goal in Paris is to reach the very top of the podium,” Park previously said. “I will go into matches thinking I won’t lose to anybody.”

Having bagged his gold medal, Park said Wednesday he’s far from done.

“I want to have a long and successful career. And this is just a start,” he said. “I want to keep winning major titles, one competition at a time.”

Despite Park’s belief in himself, and South Korean taekwondo officials’ confidence in his medal prospects, Park’s name was left off in a few pre-Olympic medal projections. Park said in late July that he wasn’t bothered by that slight because he was prepared to battle against himself, not outside expectations.

And Park proved his skeptics wrong with his run to the top of the podium Wednesday.

Park once cited his win over Jang as the most memorable moment of his career, because his biggest goal up to that point was to qualify for the Olympics.

And some six months later, Park can now call himself an Olympic champion.

“Whenever I went through tough moments, I pictured myself standing on the top of the podium and flying our national flag at whatever competition I was preparing for,” Park said. “Those happy thoughts helped me overcome adversity.”

Park became the first South Korean to win gold in this weight division. It’s something that even his idol and mentor, Lee Dae-hoon, couldn’t accomplish in his illustrious career.

Lee settled for silver at the 2012 London Olympics and later moved up to the -68kg division. An Olympic gold also eluded Lee at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, where he won bronze in his new weight class.

Park chose to attend the same high school that Lee did because he wanted to follow in Lee’s footsteps. Whenever Lee, now 32 and retired, visited his alma mater, he gave Park technical tips.

Lee is in Paris working as an analyst for a South Korean station, and watched from the booth as Park grabbed the torch from him.

“Every athlete dreams of winning an Olympic gold, and I am so honored to have this,” Park said. “And I am grateful to be even mentioned in the same breath as Dae-hoon. He’s a legend.”

(Yonhap)