Kim Dong-Sung "Speedskater Finds Career Where He Least Expected"
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Speedskater Finds Career Where He Least Expected
After Olympic Heartbreak, Kim Coaches Area Kids
By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 7, 2009; A01
After playing a reluctant role in one of the most controversial races
in Olympic history seven years ago in Salt Lake City, South Korean
speedskating star Kim Dong-Sung vowed never to return to the United
States.
Kim was in the middle of celebrating what he assumed was his gold
medal victory in the 1,500 meters when he learned he had been
disqualified for interfering with U.S. star Apolo Anton Ohno, who
ended up receiving the first-place medal. Kim was so upset he needed
oxygen in his hotel room that night. The South Korean delegation
challenged the result, then threatened to boycott the Closing
Ceremonies. Some 16,000 angry e-mails from South Korea crashed the
U.S. Olympic Committee's computer system.
But there he was this week at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex in
Arlington, wearing baggy jeans, a navy coat and gold-bladed skates,
chasing speedsuit-wearing American children around the ice during an
evening practice session. "Push, push, push!" he exhorted.
Kim's life since the 2002 Winter Games has unfolded with all of the
unexpected twists of a typical final in short-track speedskating.
Agonized at hearing the U.S. national anthem seven years ago, Kim now
wants to ensure it is played. He aspires to create a U.S. Olympic
champion in the Washington suburbs.
Ten of Kim's students will compete next weekend at the sport's
national age-group championships in Midland, Mich., a competition that
will help Kim evaluate his students' progress and his own proficiency
in a profession he didn't consider pursuing until just more than two
years ago. That's when a Maryland speedskating parent who heard he was
in the country called him up and invited him to coach.
"I came here not as a player, but as a person looking for a future
career," Kim, 28, said partly through an interpreter before the start
of Tuesday's training session. "I didn't even bring my skates."
Now he doesn't plan to leave.
"My goals have changed," he said. "I want to make a national team
member out of one of my young kids."
At home in South Korea following the 2002 Olympics, Kim's status as a
national hero grew. He already had won a gold and silver medal at the
1998 Winter Games in Nagano. He would win a record five world titles
three months later. He got mobbed at restaurants and appeared on the
covers of magazines. He pitched soda, ice cream and was sponsored by a
brokerage company.
"I got so many honorary medals from companies, sponsors and cities,"
he said. "But the one I desired was the real one from the
Olympics. . . . I thought the sport was so corrupted. I was in my best
form; I could have gotten so much more, but the referees in this sport
make the outcome."
Kim's persistent anguish made him determined to fix the problem in the
best way he could: by becoming an international referee. The South
Korea speedskating association supported his quest, he said, and
figured he would also be a perfect fit to represent the nation as a
member of the International Olympic Committee. But for both endeavors,
he would need to learn English.
That's when his retirement took its first odd turn. The speedskating
association offered to pay to send Kim, his wife, Yoo Jin, and
daughter Na Young, now nearly 4, to San Francisco for a year where Kim
could attend language school.
Kim didn't like the plan.
"My personal feeling was: Why do I have to go to a place I have so
many hard memories?" Kim said.
But his wife, eager for a respite from her husband's celebrity status,
wanted to move. So they went in 2006, after Kim attended the Winter
Games in Turin, as an announcer for South Korean television. They
immediately felt welcomed by the large Korean American community in
California. They saw educational and other opportunities for their
daughter they couldn't have imagined in their home nation, and they
had a son on the way.
About a year after their arrival, Kim received the call from the
speedskating parent in Maryland -- also Korean American -- who begged
him to move to the Washington region and become a youth coach.
He delayed an answer until after the birth of Marvin, now almost 2.
But the more he considered it, the more he became sure this unexpected
offer represented another stroke of good fortune. In June 2007, he
began coaching with the now-defunct Wheaton Speedskating Club, which
evolved into the Potomac Speedskating Club last year. Short-track
speedskating, in which skaters race against each other in hockey-sized
rinks, is known for far more mayhem than the long-track version of the
sport in which skaters race individually against a clock.
Added to the Olympic program in 1992, short-track speedskating is
gaining popularity in various pockets of the United States but is
still not widely practiced outside of Wisconsin, Colorado Springs and
a few other locales in the Northwest. About 75 percent of Potomac
Speedskating's 75 members are Korean American, according to the club's
secretary, Alison Mittelstadt. There also are small speedskating clubs
in Fort Dupont and Rockville.
When Kim began his new job, his English was still rough and his
coaching style, he said, a bit heavy-handed, so the transition from
disgruntled retired athlete to inspirational youth coach was not
without its bumpy spots.
"I had trained some children in Korea [in summer camps] but the style
is different in Korea," he said. "There, they have the utmost respect
for me. My one word rules. Here . . . "
Sitting in a leather couch in a lounge near the rink, Kim gestured
with a grin at a group of kids who had assembled for that night's
lesson. In South Korea, he said, students would diligently prepare for
the workout if their coach was within view. These children, who ranged
in age from mid-elementary schoolers to teenagers, talked and goofed
around.
Kim, who lives in Laurel, coaches his elite skaters six nights a week
and offers less frequent training for novice skaters of all ages.
He said he's learned to be less demanding and more encouraging. His
skaters described him as tough, but so dedicated to them they couldn't
help but feel his affection. On many Friday nights, he brings a half-
dozen or more skaters home with him, cooks them a Korean specialty for
dinner, then allows them to sleep on mattresses arranged throughout
his house so they can make it to Saturday's 6:30 a.m. practice
session. He shuttles the entire crew in a large van.
He also keeps four or five stationary bicycles in his basement, so
kids can work out when he invites them over for once- or twice-weekly
film sessions. They watch tapes of themselves and great skaters --
like him.
"One thing that's really different about him, he tries to understand
each one of his skaters," said Jeongsu Ha, 14. "He really tries to get
them to skate well."
Said Tiziano D'Affuso, 15: "He's a hard coach, but he's a really good
coach. He's a tough coach, but he knows what he's doing and he really
gets you to another level."
Kim hasn't been back to South Korea since he left, and he isn't sure
when he can return. He hardly has the time, he said, what with so many
kids to watch over.
"It's the personal relationships," he said. "Some of my kids have been
with me [two] years. They are more like family. . . . I have several
possible kids I see being successful. It may be happening."