A fresh start to the Winter Youth Olympics, “We’re going to win the first three gold medals in history”, with a lively fighting spirit

Lee Chae-woon won the gold medal in snowboard slopestyle at the Gangwon Winter Youth Olympics on the 25th. What Chaewoon Lee is holding in her left hand is the ‘Mungcho’ doll, the mascot for this event.

“I feel good that I succeeded in one thing, but there are still two more left, so please support me a lot.”

‘Board riding Heung-min’ Lee Chae-woon (18, Surigo High School) said this after completing his first gold medal at the 2024 Gangwon Winter Youth Olympic Games. Lee Chae-woon, a national snowboarding team member who was given this nickname because he resembles Son Heung-min (Tottenham), announced ahead of this competition that he would win gold medals in all three events, including slopestyle, halfpipe, and big air. And in the men’s slopestyle finals held at Welli Hilli Park in Hoengseong-gun, Gangwon-do on the 25th, he successfully jumped ‘Backside 1620’ (four and a half laps) and received 96 points, winning the first gold medal of the competition.

If Lee Chae-woon, whose name comes from the pure Korean word for ‘fill,’ wins gold in the big air on the 28th and the halfpipe on the 1st of next month, he will set a record of becoming the first snowboarder to win three gold medals in the history of the 4th Winter Youth Olympics. You can. Snowboarding is largely divided into the Alpine division, which competes for ‘time’, and the Freestyle division, where the winner is decided by ‘performance’. Freestyle includes △Slopestyle, which involves jumping using a kicker and using various objects such as rails, tables, boxes, waves, etc. △Big Air, which involves competing with one difficult technique on a single large jump △Riding down a semicircular sloping pipe. There are three specific events, including the halfpipe where you jump continuously while going down.

Slopestyle and big air are often used together, but there are only a few athletes in the world who are good at halfpipe, which is more difficult to take off and land. Chaewoon Lee is an athlete whose main sport is halfpipe, including winning the halfpipe category at the World Championships last year. Lee Chae-woon received an invitation to the ‘X Games’ for the first time this season, which only 8 halfpipe players in the world can receive, but decided to give up participating in the did.

Lee Chae-un, who competed in the International Ski Federation (FIS) Snowboard Halfpipe World Cup held in Switzerland until the 20th, arrived at Incheon Airport at 9 a.m. on the 22nd and immediately went to Hoengseong to begin official slopestyle training for the competition, which started at around 12:30 noon that day. The forced march continued. Lee Chae-woon smiled and said, “Actually, I’m still a little sleepy because I can’t get used to the jet lag,” and then added, “I’ll eat beef (a Hoengseong specialty product) and do my best to finish the remaining games well.”

The women’s 3-on-3 ice hockey team also won a silver medal that day. This is the first time that Korean ice hockey has won an Olympic medal in both adult and youth competitions. Korea’s final opponent on this day was Hungary, which had won all of its matches, scoring 144 points in 8 games until the semifinals, while conceding only 9 points. Korea, which lost 0-16 to Hungary in the preliminaries, lost 2-10 that day as well. In ice hockey, matches are originally decided 5-on-5, excluding the goalkeeper, but in the Youth Olympic Games, there is a separate 3-on-3 event. Heo Seok (17, Uijeongbu High School) and Lim Ri-won (17, Uijeongbu Girls’ High School) also added a silver medal in the speed skating mixed relay. 고스톱