The darlings of South Korea’s Winter Olympics are back in the headlines eight months after their stirring run to a curling silver medal in Pyeongchang.
The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism yesterday announced a joint investigation with the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee into allegations by the “Garlic Girls” of abuse.
The women’s curling team that shot to international renown in February sent a letter to the committee last week to outline their allegations.
The five women, from a remote province famous for its garlic, captured hearts and became sought-after models for commercials.
The attention was so great during the Games that their coach took away their cellphones to shield them from pressure.
In the letter, Kim Eun-jung, Kim Seon-yeong and Kim Cho-hee, as well as the sisters Kim Yeong-ae and Kim Yeong-mi, accused former Korean Curling Federation vice president Kim Kyong-doo of verbal abuse and team coaches of giving unreasonable orders and subjecting their private lives to excessive control.
“The human rights of the athletes are being violated,” the athletes wrote. “We’ve reached a point where it has become unbearable.”
The curlers also accused coaches of holding back prize money and trying to sideline captain Kim Eun-jung after learning of her plans to start a family.
The coaches “tried to rule Kim Eun-jung off the team after she got married in July,” the letter said. “They separated the skip and the team captain’s role to minimize Kim Eun-jung’s status on the team. They also tried not to include Kim Eun-jung in team training.”
The players said that they no longer wish to work with head coach Kim Min-jung, daughter of Kim Kyung-doo, and her husband, Jang Ban-seok, who is mixed doubles coach. The coaching staff deny the allegations.
Jang also denied any funds had been withheld from the athletes, saying that the team had agreed that prize money would be spent on overseas training and competitions.
The investigation is to begin next week.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier