HOW SOUTH KOREA IS BOOSTING ITS CHANCES
Host country South Korea tries to boost its chances for success in Winter Games by luring other nations’ Olympians.
When Aileen Frisch of Germany
became the world junior luge champion in 2012, it might have seemed that her Olympic future was set. It was, but for a country she never expected South Korea. —
After South Korea won hosting rights to the 2018 Winter Games in 2011, the country needed to turn Pyeongchang, a little-known hamlet 100 miles east of Seoul, into a winter sports capital capable of staging competitions in 15 sports and housing 3,000 athletes and thou
sands more Olympic officials, journalists and visitors. It also needed a luge team.
South Korea has experienced limited Olympic success in winter sports. Of its 53 medals, 42 have come in short-track speedskating, nine in long-track speedskating and two in figure skating. None have come in the sliding sports of bobsled, luge or skeleton.
So South Korea followed a familiar strategy for host nations that do not excel at winter sports and do not want to be embarrassed before a home audience: It went shopping, hiring a number of foreign coaches and granting citizenship to athletes from other countries.
South Korea found a luger from Germany. Hockey players from the United States and Canada. Biathletes from Russia. A cross-country skier from Norway. An ice dancer from Boston.
The strategy fostered cul- tural resentment and awak- ening. All told, 19 athletes were granted citizenship by South Korea on its team of 144 participants in the Winter Games. While precise statistics are not kept, this appears to be the largest number of athletes naturalized by the host country of a Winter Games, according to Bill Mallon, an Olympic historian from the United States who keeps a database of roughly 140,000 athletes.
Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter permits athletes to change their nationalities, but they must generally wait three years before partici- pating for a second nation in the games, unless the rule is waived. Some naturalized South Korean athletes have birth or familial ties to the country and have gained dual citizenship. Others are essentially Olympic merce- naries, including Frisch, who had mixed feelings about competing for South Korea when the host nation ini- tially approached her.
“I didn’t feel Korean, I didn’t speak Korean,” she said. “It sounded a little crazy.”
Germany dominates luge. The country has four luge tracks and nearly a quarter of the world’s courses for elite competitions. At the 2014 Winter Games, German lugers won all four available gold medals. Frisch failed to make that sliding team. Competition and pressure are immense to make the country’s Olympic squad. Discouraged, she retired in 2015 at age 22.
“It was frustrating,” Frisch, now 25, said. “I didn’t have much fun anymore.”
Then came an unexpected call. South Korea’s luge federation hired a German, Stef- fen Sartor, as its national coach. And Sartor contacted Frisch in late 2015 to gauge her interest in competing for South Korea in the Games. Her first response was no.
In early 2016, a second entreaty came. This time Frisch reconsidered. She missed traveling and com- peting. And she was drawn to South Korea’s history of existing on a divided peninsula. In some ways, it resembled Germany’s own rived past. “I liked the idea of becom
ing Korean,” Frisch said. She took 40 hours of language, history and cultural lessons from a teacher in Germany, then moved to South Korea and immersed herself in the language and the cul
ture. At first, some South Korean lugers were wary of her presence, Frisch said.
“I got the feeling that some of my teammates thought I should have not come,” she said. “They thought I’m just a foreigner and were afraid I would take their place. They did not see that I could also
help them to become better.” In December 2016, Frisch received South Korean citize n ship a fter passing an interview where she answered questions about Korean historical figures and sang the country’s national anthem. She also got better at luge. “I’m having fun again,” Frisch said. “I reached skills I never had in Germany.”
Recruiting is essential for a Winter Games, whose sports are mostly obscure and generate a relatively limited pool of athletes. Even a winter power like Russia used two naturalized athletes — a Korean-born short-track speedskater named Viktor Ahn and an American-born snowboarder named Vic Wild — to win five of its nine gold medals as host of the 2014 Winter Games.
Eleven of South Korea’s naturalized Olympians in 2018 are on its men’s (seven)
and women’s (four) hockey teams. The country had only 200 to 300 registered adult players, and had never participated in previous Olympic hockey tournaments. The sport’s international governing body strongly encouraged South Korea’s Olympic officials to recruit foreigners to become competitive, said Yang Seung-jun, the chief of Olympic planning and preparation for the South Korean Ice Hockey Association.
While there was no opposition from Korean-born coaches and players, Yang said, “The most difficult part was Korean people’s sentiment against foreign players. Koreans are very ethnocentric. We had to work very hard to win their heart.”
For some South Korean Olympians, dual citizenship has brought a reconnection with the land of their birth.