Controlled Aggression in Beijing Olympic 2008
Controlled Aggression in Beijing Olympic 2008
(NewDesignWorld Press Release Center) 22 August 2008, Beijing -- One of the last sports to get under way at the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, taekwondo is also one of the most recent additions to the Olympic programme, making its entrance as a full medal sport only in 2000, featuring four weight categories for men and four for women.
Korean heritage
As befits the nation that gave the sport to the world, South Korea was the outstanding country in the inaugural competition in Sydney, winning three gold medals and a silver. Considering it was allowed to enter only four athletes, including men’s heavyweight champion Kim Kyong-hun and women’s welterweight winner Lee Sun-hee, this was quite an achievement.
Kyong-Hun KIM Sun Hee LEE
First Vietnamese medallist
South Korea’s third gold medallist in Sydney, Jun Jae-eun, won the final of the women’s featherweight competition against Tran Hieu Nga, who became the first Vietnamese athlete ever to earn an Olympic medal. Ngan, whose father had died two months before the Olympic Games, came from the small fishing village of Tuy Hoa, where her family ran a sweetshop.
Double gold medallists
The men’s featherweight title in Sydney went to American Steven Lopez, the son of Nicuraguan immigrants, who went on to capture his second gold medal four years later in Athens, at welterweight. Prior to these Games, Lopez was the only man to have won two Olympic taekwondo gold medals, an achievement equalled among the women by China’s Chen Zhong, who won the first two Olympic heavyweight titles.
Zhong CHEN
Taiwan strikes gold
One of the stories of the Athens Games surrounded Taiwan. Chen Shih-hsien, in winning at flyweight, became Taiwan’s first Olympic gold medallist in any sport, and just 20 minutes later her compatriot Chu Mu-yen took gold in the men’s flyweight. And as if that was not enough, less than four months after the Games, men’s featherweight silver medallist Huang Chih-hsiung was elected to the Taiwanese parliament.
Justice is done
The man who beat Huang to the gold in Athens was Hadi Saei Bonehkohal of Iran, who had won a bronze medal at featherweight in the 2000 Games. Early in 2004 he gave his bronze medal away to be auctioned to raise money for the survivors of an earthquake the previous year that had devastated his home town of Bam. Justice of a sort was therefore done when his bronze medal was replaced with gold.
Discuss Bury
NDW PR Center is a Web 2.0 News release and distribution service
