The ‘Festival of 4.7 billion Asians’ is back. The 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games will open in 10 days. Korean sports are in a situation where we cannot just enjoy them. This is because evaluations continue to indicate that ‘international competitiveness’ is declining. This competition is a ‘test’.

The 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games will open in Hangzhou, China on the 23rd as the 19th competition. This is a competition that should have been held last year in the first place. It will be held this year after being postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Unusually, this is the first Asian Games to be held in five years.

Approximately 12,500 athletes from 45 countries under the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) are expected to participate and engage in fierce competition. Athletes from each country will compete for a total of 481 gold medals in 40 official events and 61 detailed events from the 23rd to October 8th. Korea will send a team of 1,180 athletes, including players and coaches, the largest number ever.

Korea is basically a sports powerhouse in Asia. At the Asian Games, they dominated the competition together with China and Japan. In particular, it was ranked 2nd in the overall rankings for five consecutive years from the 1998 Bangkok Games to the 2014 Incheon Games.

China is in a situation where there is no choice. In fact, the highest ranking Korea can rise to is second place. There was fierce competition with Japan. Since the 1994 Hiroshima Games, Korea has had the upper hand.

This trend was broken at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Games. They fell behind Japan and came in 3rd place overall. In addition to China, which was difficult to overcome in the first place, Japan has also made a leap forward. Korea was unable to chase after China or shake off Japan.

The medal numbers speak for themselves. Korea won 49 gold medals, 58 silver medals, and 70 bronze medals. Japan alone has 75 gold medals. There are 65 silver medals and 74 bronze medals.

At the 2014 Incheon Games, Korea had 79 gold medals and Japan had 47 gold medals. At the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, the number of gold medals for Korea and Japan was 76 and 48, respectively.

It was completely overturned in Jakarta-Palembang in 2018. I participated with the goal of winning 70 gold medals, but I couldn’t even win 50. The sound of ‘catastrophe’ could have been heard.

Table tennis Shin Yu-bin (right) is attending the Korean team selection ceremony for the Hangzhou Asian Games held at the Olympic Hall in Olympic Park, Songpa-gu, Seoul on the 12th. photos | Bangi-dong = Yonhap News

In fact, it is a competition that Japan has ‘determinedly’ entered into. Ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, we rolled up our sleeves to foster elite sports. I even came all the way to Korea to see the Jincheon Athletes’ Village in person.

The 2018 Asian Games were set as a ‘prelude’ to the Olympics. As elite training was added to the foundation established through daily sports, results followed. Afterwards, at the 2021 Olympics, he won 27 gold medals, 14 silver medals, and 17 bronze medals, ranking third overall. It was Japan’s best performance ever.

The situation is different in Korea. It grew mainly around the elite, but since 2016, it has begun to integrate elite and daily life sports. The Korea Sports Council and the National Sports Council were merged to form the Korea Sports Council.온라인바카라

The plan is to foster elites based on lifestyle sports. It was something that was needed in the long run. There are definitely some things that have improved since then. However, there are quite a few voices saying that ‘Korean sports are not working properly’ overall. Amidst the chaos, he participated in the 2018 Asian Games and performed poorly.

At this year’s Hangzhou Games, Korea set a goal of 50 gold medals. Expected to finish 3rd overall. There were 20 missing gold medals compared to the last competition. This means that the country’s power has weakened and other countries have become stronger.

This Asian Games is not the end. Just one year later, the 2024 Paris Olympics will be held. We need to do well in this competition for the sake of the Olympics. In the longer term, we must also show that elite sports are not pushed aside even if they are based on daily sports.

A current KBO League manager said, “Isn’t it true that baseball is no longer as good as it used to be? I think they are neglecting the elite in order to save sports for everyday life. If the performance continues to be poor at international competitions, there will be talk of going back to focusing on the elite. “I hope it goes well,” he said bitterly.

Anyway, the competition is just around the corner. At the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games Korean athletes selection ceremony held at the Olympic Hall in Olympic Park on the 12th, Lee Ki-heung, Chairman of the Korea Sports Council, emphasized, “This competition will be a new starting point for Korean sports.”

Regardless of the external environment, the players sweated hard in their respective places, including the Jincheon Athletes’ Village. All that remains is to do your best and achieve results. Based on those achievements, the future of Korean sports must be precisely redrawn.