Kim Woo-min (22, Gangwon Provincial Office) made the biggest leap forward at the 2024 International Swimming Federation World Championships, where the South Korean swim team recorded its best-ever performance. Kim was the first to touch the touchpad in the men’s 400-meter freestyle final on Wednesday, clocking a personal best of 3:42.71.It was South Korea’s first long course (50-meter) World Championships gold medal in 13 years after Park Tae-hwan (34) won the event in Shanghai in 2011.Kim Woo-min has shown tremendous growth in Park’s main event, the 400-meter freestyle, and has been shaving seconds off his time. He first broke into the 43-second range with a time of 3:43.92 at last year’s Fukuoka World Championships and has since dropped more than a second in just half a year. At his current pace, Park could challenge the Korean record of 3:41.53, set by Tae-hwan Park at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou .If he does indeed break 3:41, it would not be out of the question for him to be on the podium at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris in July. “If I want to win an Olympic medal, I need to improve my time here,” Kim said at a press conference after returning home through Incheon International Airport on July 19. Then I can compete with Australia’s Sam Short and Tunisia’s Ahmed Hafnaoui,” he said.
Short won the 400m freestyle at last year’s World Championships in Fukuoka in 3:40.68 and is not competing in Doha .Hafnaoui won a surprise gold medal in the men’s 400m freestyle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021 in 3:43.36 despite being assigned to lane eight. He took silver in 3:40.70 in Fukuoka last year, and in Doha, he failed to qualify in 3:48.05.When asked if he could improve on Park’s time of 3:41, Kim said, “If I can make up for my deficiencies with training and be in the best physical condition, I’m sure I can. “Kim’s confidence comes from his performance at Doha, where he was not at his best .In the 400-meter freestyle final, he maintained his world record pace until the 300-meter mark .When asked if he was overpacing, Kim said, “It was just what I practiced. I was ready for 300 meters. Now I just need to improve the last 100 meters and I think I will have a really good time and ranking.”
After winning the 400-meter freestyle, Kim was unable to properly express his joy as he looked at the scoreboard with a dazed expression. “After I finished, I looked at the scoreboard, but it didn’t show my time, so I was embarrassed. When the announcer called my name, I realized that I had won first place, so I was surprised,” he explained, adding, “I was disappointed that I couldn’t do the ceremony, but I’ll save it for the Paris Olympics. “Kim Woo-min was even happier to share the gold medal with his roommate Hwang Sun-woo (20-Gangwon Provincial Office).After Kim won first and Hwang won gold in the 200-meter freestyle, the two celebrated with a selfie in front of their room mirror. “Our room was 802, and we talked about ‘802 is in good spirits,'” Kim says. We told each other that we struggled and that we did well, and we took a picture,” Kim explains. When asked about the similarity of the room number ‘802’ to the ‘Paris (82) Olympics,’ he smiled, saying, “I think it was a room number with a 카지노사이트킹 good meaning.”