South Korea beefs up its team by naturalizing citizens
South Korea landed the Winter Games. Then it needed to beef up its team.
WPYEONGCHANG, South Korea hen 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 thousands 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 speed skating and two in figure skating. None have come in the sliding sports of bobsled, luge or skeleton.
So South Korea has 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 cultural resentment and awakening. All told, 19 athletes were granted citizenship by South Korea on its team of 144 participants in the Winter Games. A 20th athlete was granted citizenship for the Paralympics in March, but was later not selected for the team.
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 participating 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 mercenaries, including Frisch, who had mixed feelings about competing for South Korea when the host nation initially approached her.
“I didn’t feel Korean, I didn’t speak Korean,” she said in a telephone interview. “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. The success is a remnant of the country’s Cold War divide: Of the 129 Olympic medals awarded in luge since 1964, 75 have been won by East or West Germans or athletes from the unified team.
At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, 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, Steffen Sartor, to be its national coach in preparation for the Olympics. And Sartor contacted Frisch in late 2015 to gauge her interest in competing for South Korea in the
I didn’t feel Korean, I didn’t speak Korean. It sounded a little crazy.” Aileen Frisch, talking about when she was asked about competing for South Korea
MGANGNEUNG, South Korea irai Nagasu and Adam Rippon shared tears of sorrow when they were left off the Olympic team four years ago, each of them passed over in decisions that could have gone either way. They shed tears of joy together Monday. The veteran figure skaters put together flawless back-to-back performances, Nagasu becoming the first American woman to land a triple axel in the Olympics, Rippon nailing both of his triple axels. They helped earn the United States the bronze medal in the team competition.
Canada won the gold medal, with the Russians taking the silver.
“For both of us to be on this team, and to be on the same floor in the village, it’s all super exciting,” Nagasu said. “He won’t stop talking about how exciting this all is, and I go: ‘Adam! Adam! You know we still have a job to get done? We still have to skate well!’ ” They skated better than well. It was Rippon who led off the final day of the team event, when the Americans were still in a nip-and-tuck struggle with Italy for the podium. The 28-year-old, wearing a sequined outfit that sparkled like a million diamonds, dumped a planned quad lutz but otherwise ripped through his routine with confidence and precision.
His jumps were sharp. His lines were smooth. His emotion, as usual, was worn on his sleeves.
Rippon thrust his arms out with a triumphant grin when he finished his program, basking in a loud ovation from a crowd filled with plenty of American fans. He then began skating circles on the ice, admitting later he wanted to spend as much time as possible before stepping off.
“It felt worth the 28-year wait, you know?” Rippon said. “I was sitting backstage and I thought: ‘You know what? I still feel like I might throw up. And I might miss every element in my program.’ But I said: ‘You know what? I trained so hard and I know when I get out there I’m going to go for everything, take one element at a time,’ and I was able to do that.”
He finished with 172.9 points, less than a point behind Russian skater Mikhail Kolyada and less than seven points behind Patrick Chan, part of the winning Canadian squad.
More importantly, he finished ahead of Italian skater Matteo Rizzo to build on the U.S. cushion.
“We made a few changes with my coach and I was able to put together a strong performance,” Rippon said, “but there’s definitely a few points I want to squeeze out of this performance. I have one week until the individual and I’m going to be squeezing the hell out of it, you can believe that.”
It’s hard to believe Nagasu could squeeze much more out of her routine.
After finishing fourth at the 2010 Vancouver Games and getting passed over for Ashley Wagner four years ago for Sochi, the 24-year-old made a long-awaited return to Olympic ice. And she did it by etching her name in the record books with a triple axel for the ages.
Like a great locomotive, Nagasu began picking up speed the moment her music began, uncorking the same vexing 3½-rotation jump on which Chan fell an hour earlier. She landed it to a roar from the American contingent seated at one end of the ice, joining Japan’s Midori Ito and Mao Asada as the only female skaters to land the jump in Olympic competition. “I could see my teammates standing out of excitement,” Nagasu said, “and at that moment I wanted to stop the music and get off, but I still had my whole program ahead of me.”
She somehow managed to calm her nerves, hit every jump the rest of the way and score a personal-best 137.53 points to finish second behind Russian star Alina Zagitova.
Her tremendous performance nearly clinched the bronze medal, and it became official when siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani took the ice for the free dance — the final event in the competition.
As the “Shib Sibs” twizzled across the ice, Rippon put an arm around Nagasu and kissed her cheek.
No tears, though. Only joy.