S.Korea’s Park pulls out of Asian Games

South Korea’s fading poster boy Park Tae-hwan insisted he wasn’t about to retire as he announced his withdrawal from next month’s Asian Games, saying he wasn’t in good enough shape despite non-stop training. The 28-year-old former Olympic champion, who has labored to recover from a doping ban imposed in 2015, said he needed time to consider his future.

“Even if I have been training nonstop since 2016, I recently came to realize I am not in a good shape to achieve good results,” Park said in a statement released by his agency.

“I and my company, therefore, have decided to stay away from the Asian Games.”

Park, nicknamed “Marine Boy,” became Asia’s first Olympic champion in the men’s 400-meter freestyle when he took gold in Beijing in 2008.

“I’m not considering retirement yet but I’d like to have time to think about the future course of my activities,” he said.

Park won a silver and five bronze medals at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, where the swimming competition was held at the Park Taehwan Aquatics Center.

But he was stripped of those medals and banned for 18 months after testing positive for an anabolic steroid in outof-competition controls before the Games.

After the ban was lifted, Park entered three events at the 2016 Rio Olympics but was eliminated in the preliminary rounds, failing to add to his career tally of four Olympic medals.