With South Korea struggling to pick up gold medals at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the pressure to end the drought rested squarely on the shoulders of a taekwondo fighter in the women's lightest weight class.
(Park Hae-mook/The Korea Herald)
And Kim So-hui, crowned the Olympic champion in the -49kg category on Wednesday, didn't disappoint.
Kim defeated Tijana Bogdanovic 7-6 in the nervy final at Carioca Arena 3. It had an anticlimactic finish, too, as both athletes had to wait for the result of a video review on the final play.
With Kim hanging on to a one-point lead, Bogdanovic executed what she believed was a valid kick to the South Korean's body. Once the referee signaled that the kick was no good, celebration ensued on Kim's camp.
Her quarterfinals and semifinals matches were also decided by the narrowest of margins, but at the tender age of 22, Kim already knows a thing or two about handling pressure.
Kim was all of 17 when she captured the first of her two world championships in 2011. Tasting success at such an early age, and the weight of expectations that accompanied it, would have crumbled the more feeble-minded.
With the Olympic gold medal around her neck, Kim said Wednesday she actually embraced the pressure.
"Obviously, there was a great deal of pressure on me to follow upon my early success," she said. "But if I keep thinking about it, I knew it would do me no good. Coming into this Olympics, I adopted the mindset of a challenger, and I didn't want to push myself too hard for a gold medal."
She had been competing at -46kg internationally, but the lightest Olympic class is -49kg. It may not seem like much of a difference, but Kim said she's smaller than most of her rivals in the -49kg class, and she's had to pack more muscles to stay competitive.
On the mental side, though, Kim didn't need as much work.
"I wasn't even that nervous today," Kim said. "I kept telling myself I should stay composed. In the past, when I rushed my moves, I'd always lose. I knew that as long as I relaxed, I could even see my opponents' feet moving."
While Kim wasn't necessarily trying to win a gold, she did have one rival in mind: the two-time defending Olympic champion from China, Wu Jingyu.
Kim had been 0-2 against Wu, and said she wanted nothing more than a chance to avenge earlier losses. As it happened, We lost to Bogdanovic in the quarterfinals.
"I wanted to face Wu Jingyu for the gold medal," Kim said. "My goal here was to keep Wu from winning her third straight gold medal."
Asked if she thought she would have beaten Wu in the final, Kim said confidently, "Yes."
Kim won her second world championship in 2013 in Puebla, Mexico. She then won a gold medal at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, west of Seoul. This Olympic gold capped off a strong five-year stretch that also included a bronze medal at the 2012 Asian championships.
Despite her credentials, Kim almost never made it to Rio in the first place. And her improbable journey to the top of the Olympic podium Wednesday -- with one narrow victory after another -- resembled the rocky road she traveled just to qualify for the Olympics.
Kim wouldn't have been on the Olympic team under the previous qualification rules, which limited countries to each field two male and two female athletes. And South Korea had never sent an athlete in the -49kg class for strategic reasons.
For the Rio Games, the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) altered the rules, so that those positioned inside the top six in their weight classes on the WTF Olympic rankings could all qualify.
Countries could now have an athlete in each of the eight Olympic divisions.
Kim would finally have her chance, but she still had work to do.
She needed to put herself inside the top six in her class, but after losing her first match in the WTF World Grand Prix Final last December, she ended the year in seventh place.
After a series of breaks for Kim -- one upset after another wreaking havoc on the ranking positions -- Thailand ended up with two fighters inside the top six in -49kg. And because of the limit of one fighter per nation, Kim moved up to get the final Olympic spot.
"This was such an incredible victory," Kim said. "I've had to go through a lot just to qualify for the Olympics. I am so grateful for everything that's happened." (Yonhap)
