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Korea posts its best-ever results in figure skating ice dance

Korea posts its best-ever results in figure skating ice dance

Posted September. 17, 2013 03:05,   

한국어

Korea has posted its best-ever results in figure skating ice dance. At the International Skating Union`s third event of Junior Grand Prix held at Kosice, Slovakia on Monday, a pair led by Rebeka Kim and Kirill Minov scored 121.5 in short and free ice dance, ranking fifth among 20 pairs.

This is the best-ever result for Korean ice dance in an international game excluding Asian games. The previous top ranking was 7th, which was posted by Yang Tae-hwa and Lee Cheon-goon pair at the 2001 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships.

Rebeka Kim was born in Lithuania and is playing in Russia. The Rebeka Kim and Kirill Minov pair has been representing Korea since last year. The International Skating Union has a rule that if the players of a team are of different nationality, the two countries mediate each other to select the country to represent before the players taking part in competitions.

Since the Kim Hye-min and Kim Min-woo pair retired in 2006, there have been no Korean players doing ice dance. As the Korea Skating Union started fostering players to compete in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games, ice team was created last year for the first time in six years. Rebeka Kim became Korea`s national player last year, but it is unknown yet whether the pair can participate in Pyeongchang games.

At Olympics, the players in a team should have same nationality. Russian native Minov showed an intention of going for Korean citizenship but this has yet to be determined. Korea hasn`t been able to have any ice dance player join Olympics since Yang Tae-hwa and Lee Cheon-goon participated at the 2002 Salt Lake City games.