The Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the first Summer Games to be held in the cultural and artistic city of Paris in 100 years, will feature a variety of French landmarks as venues.
The Grand Palais will host the fencing and taekwondo events, two of Korea’s medal favorites.
The large exhibition center and museum, built to commemorate the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, hosted the fencing world championships in November 2010.
That event marked a new chapter in Korean fencing history.
Won Woo-young, the coach of the Korean men’s sabre team that will compete at the Olympics, became the first Korean sabre athlete to win the title.
Previously, Korea had only won gold medals in the women’s epee in 2002 (Hyun-hee Hyun) and the women’s foil team in 2005.
Led by Won, who also became the first Asian athlete to win the men’s individual sabre title at the World Championships, sabre has become an increasingly prominent sport on the international stage.
“I had never seen such a large and colorful stadium before, and it was amazing and new to compete in such a place,” says Won, who returned to the Grand Palais as a national coach 14 years ago. ‘I just remember being surprised, thinking, ’Wow, this is nice and nice,‘ and ’France is the dominant fencing country.
“I trained like crazy, but I think I was more focused on doing my best and coming here, rather than trying to win or medal, because men’s sabre wasn’t doing very well on the international stage,” he said, adding, ”I had a very hard time moving up from my first round of 64.”
Won, who was ranked just 30th in the world at the time, went on to defeat top players including defending champion Nicholas Limbach (GER) to become the world champion.
“I think I was more comfortable in the large and colorful Grand Palais,” Won says, adding, ”There were a lot of spectators, and I think I was more suited to such a high-profile event.”
While fencing competitions are usually held in the dark in an enclosed space, the Grand Palais, with its much larger space and glass dome ceiling, is relatively bright, according to Won.
This is something that Oh Sang-wook (Daejeon Metropolitan Government), Koo Bon-gil (Korea Sports Promotion Organization), Park Sang-won (Daejeon Metropolitan Government), and Do Kyung-dong (Armed Forces Athletic Corps) will have to adjust to in the time remaining before the Paris Games.
The oldest member of the team, Koo Bon-gil, competed with Won at the World Championships 14 years ago.
“I’m passing on a lot of my feelings to the players. “I’m telling them that there are some differences from the traditional venues that they should consider,” he said.
Won, a member of South Korea’s winning men’s sabre team at the 2012 London Olympics, came to Paris with the dream of “gold” as a coach.
“It’s a different feeling to compete in a big competition with athletes in the place where I made history, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve prepared hard,” he said, vowing to do well.
The fencing events at the Paris Olympic Games will begin on the 27th, the day after the Opening Ceremony, with the men’s sabre and women’s epee events.Korean fencers are expected to medal in both events on the first day. 안전놀이터