BEIJING– After a rocky start to her second Winter Olympics, Beijing 2022 kept getting better and better for Choi Min-jeong.
For the South Korean short track speed skater, it culminated in a gold medal in the 1,500m on Wednesday.
Choi defeated two of her biggest rivals, Arianna Fontana of Italy and Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands, for the gold at Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing.
She had earlier won silver medals in the 1,000m and 3,000m relay.
Those medals had come after disappointing results in her earlier events. In the mixed team relay, Choi watched teammate Park Jang-hyuk fall with three laps remaining in the quarterfinal heat as South Korea got eliminated without even sniffing a medal.
In her first individual race, the 500m, Choi fell, without contact, during her quarterfinal heat. Suddenly, the country’s best hope for a short track medal was 0-for-2.
She quickly bounced back by winning silver in the 1,000m and then anchoring South Korea to silver in the 3,000m relay. South Korea was in the back of the pack for most of that race before Choi dragged the team to second place over the final stretch.
In the 1,500m final, Choi was at her masterful self. She comfortably stayed back in the pack as others picked up pace early in the 13 1/2-lap race. She waited until the halfway point to kick into another gear that no one else had.
“This is incredible. I am so happy,” Choi said. “I had a lot of different scenarios in my mind. I was ready for the way the race eventually played out.”
Choi’s gold ensured that all women’s individual races had a repeat champion from 2018. Fontana defended her 500m gold medal here, and Schulting captured her second straight gold in the 1,000m as well.
With five career medals, Choi also pulled into a tie with three others for most Winter Olympic medals by a South Korean athlete.
Still just 23, Choi will likely have the record all to herself at the next Winter Olympics in 2026.
But when her final race was done here, Choi wasn’t yet ready to look that far down the road.
“I was just so exhausted after this. I didn’t have anything else on my mind at that moment,” Choi said with a smile. “This was the last race of the Olympics here, and I didn’t yet have a gold medal. There was so much on my mind, and I was glad to have finished it so well.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency