One hundred days remain before the 31st Summer Olympic Games kick off for a 17-day competition in Rio de Janeiro.
A noteworthy event for local spectators is whether the country’s soccer team will advance to the semifinals, as they did four years ago in London, taking bronze. Fans are pinning their hopes on forward Son Heung-min, who plays in the English Premier League.
Another is whether LPGA star Park In-bee or one of the other Korean female players will capture gold in golf, which has been designated as one of the 28 official sports in Rio for the first time since the third modern Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904.
On the contrary, spectators cannot enjoy watching baseball, as the sport, popular among Koreans, has not been included, starting from the 2012 London Olympics. The last time was the 2008 Beijing Games, when the Korean team took gold by beating Cuba, Japan and the U.S.
Further, at the present stage, there is a low possibility that fans of “Marine Boy” Park Tae-hwan will see him compete in Rio. Park’s popularity -- as the gold medalist in 2008 and the silver medalist in 2012 -- exceeds that of other major Korean Olympic stars.
After the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, Park tested positive for testosterone, which led him to serve 1 1/2-year international doping suspension that began retroactively on Sept. 3, 2014, and expired on March 2, 2016.
Despite the ban expiring, the Korean Sport Olympic Committee is adhering to its position that it has no plan to modify its rule on athletes that served doping suspensions. It bars them from representing the country for three years, starting on the day their ban ends. Under the current stipulation, Park is banned from selection until 2019.
There is no doubt that any lenience on rule-perpetrators might harm the nation’s credibility in terms of global sportsmanship, as in the case of 100-meter sprinter Ben Johnson, whose gold medal during the 1988 Seoul Olympics was later retracted in the wake of his doping scandal. The 100m gold was handed over to Carl Lewis from the U.S.
Nonetheless, the Korean committee needs to keep in mind that Johnson’s country, Canada, and the International Olympic Committee provided him with another opportunity to compete at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, as a two-year ban on the Jamaica-born athlete had been lifted.
If the Korean committee has any room to reflect on the wishes of Park’s fans to see him in Rio, it should pave the way for him to again apologize to the global sports community, including spectators and his competitors, for his misconduct. Park must show integrity in seeking the public’s pardon.
Most local sports fans do not want a repeat of the case of short-track speed skater Ahn Hyun-soo (now known as Viktor Ahn). Ahn took three golds as a Russian national representative during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, after giving up his Korean citizenship.
Though the two cases are different, there is a similarity in the aspects of widespread speculation that there are low-key powers who are reportedly trying to disparage the ability and performance of Ahn and Park due to alleged jealousy.
It may be recalled that, several years ago, Park visited a Canadian international school on Jejudo Island to train, as it was difficult for him to use state-run facilities.
