Korea’s Misleading Skate Medal Count

The 2006 World Roller Speed Skating Championships closed on September 9. According to the rankings reported by the Korea Roller Sports Federation (KRSF) on the official website of the tournament, Korea won seven gold medals, eight silvers, and eight bronze medals and took second place next to Colombia which won 15 golds, 15 silvers and 11 bronzes.

From this record, it appears that Korea is a “powerhouse” in roller sports. But if you look carefully inside to seek where these medals came from, it suggests something else. The standings announced by the federation are a combination of the results of the junior class (for those 17 or under) and the senior class.

Korea collected seven gold medals from the junior competitions but none from the seniors except for three silver medals and four bronzes.

It is common sense to use senior class records to assess the level of competitiveness of a certain country in a particular sport. The International Roller Sports Federation (FIRS) sums up the rankings by accumulative points, not by medals, and they separate the juniors from seniors when they do so. This ‘official’ version of standings is not posted on the tournament’s official website.

It is understandable that the KRSF mixed up the senior records with the juniors. Since 2001, the number of people enjoying in-line skating surged and Korea has now in an era with “four million in-line skaters.” There are as many as 14 stadiums as well, and the federation might have wanted to “frill” their records to a level suitable to this outstanding infrastructure.

They should be courageous, however, to expose the reality as it is, since otherwise, there can’t be discussions to improve our status taking place. As for the wide gap between the records of juniors and seniors, it is worth enough to pay attention to Mun Ji-uk, the president of the Korean chapter of Inline Certification Program International, as he said, “It seems that the young juniors take excessive trainings and they suffer from side-effects for that such as injuries when they become seniors.”