Garlic Girls allege abuse by coaches
Olympic medallists say they faced verbal tirades, controlling behaviour
The Garlic Girls, South Korea’s hugely popular Olympic silver medallist curlers, accused their coaches Thursday of ruining the team with abusive treatment in a dispute that has spoiled one of the year’s feel-good sports stories.
The women’s claims, if confirmed, suggest a familiar tale of abuse, corruption and nepotism that has regularly marred South Korea’s highly hierarchical elite sports scene. Men often run South Korean sports efforts, and while the team’s head coach is a woman, men in her family, including her father, a former leading figure in South Korean curling, play a prominent part in the team’s accusations of abuse.
“We can no longer work with a coaching staff that is trying to divide the team,” Kim Seon-yeong said in a glum news confer- ence in Seoul. The players also accused the coaching staff of skipping training sessions, holding back prize money and trying to force a married member off the team.
“We need a coaching staff that can train and lead us properly. We want to continue our curling careers and aim for bigger goals at the Beijing Olympics,” Kim Seon-yeong said.
The news conference came a day after South Korea’s Sports Ministry and National Olympic Committee announced a joint investigation into allegations that became public after the athletes sent a letter outlining their complaints to sports authorities last week. The five-member women’s curling team became an overnight sensation after their silver medal run in February’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Their nickname is a nod to the famous garlic produced in their hometown in Uiseong, in southern South Korea.
In their letter to the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee last week, Kim Eun-jung, Kim Seon-yeong, Kim Cho-hee, and sisters Kim Kyeong-ae and Kim Yeong-mi accused former Korean Curling Federation vicepresident Kim Kyung-doo of verbal abuse and team coaches of giving unreasonable orders and subjecting their lives to excessive control.
On Thursday, the curlers said coaches told them what to say in interviews and closely monitored their private lives after training hours, scolding them if they met with athletes from rival teams. Letters and presents sent by fans “were already ripped open” before they reached the curlers, Kim Seonyeong said.
The curlers said the coaches withheld prize money and tried to sideline the married captain Kim Eun-jung after learning of her plans to start a family. They said the coaches also tried to force Kim Cho-hee off the team to open a spot for head coach Kim Min-jung to participate in the Olympics as an athlete. They also said they had to endure a tirade from Kim Kyungdoo after they decided to stick with their teammate.
Kim Kyung-doo and his family had extensive control over the team with his daughter, Kim Min-jung, being the head coach and his son-in-law, Jang Ban-seok, the mixed doubles coach. The curlers organized the news conference after the coaching staff publicly denied the accusations.