Short Track Hwang Dae-Heon defeats Lin Xiaojun to win 1,500 meters in World Cup race 1
South Korean men’s short track standout Hwang Dae-heon (Gangwon-do Province) dominated his former national teammate Lin Xiaojun (Sino-Korean: Lim Hyo-jun) in their first international meeting in four years.
Hwang crossed the line first in the men’s 1,500-meter final with a time of 2 minutes, 23.66 seconds to win gold at the first International Ice Skating Union (ISU) World Cup event of the 2023-2024 season in Montreal, Canada, on Sunday (Feb. 22). He beat Stijn Desmut (Belgium – 2:23.789) by 0.123 seconds.
His teammate in the final, Kim Gun-woo (KOR), just missed out on a medal with a fourth-place finish.
After taking a break after the Beijing Winter Olympics last year, Hwang Dae-heon returned his Korean flag for the 2022-2023 season and showed no signs of rust in his first competition back on the World Cup series this season.
The biggest storyline of the men’s 1,500 meters was the clash between Hwang and Lin Xiaojun, who had a bitter history with the Korean national team.
The two were teammates under the Korean flag, but their relationship fell apart in 2019 after an unsavory incident during training.
After receiving a one-year suspension from the KOC, Lin Xiaozhun returned to China and met Hwang Daeheon at an international competition for the first time in four years.
The two finally met in the men’s 1,500-meter semifinals.
In the semifinals, Lin Xiaozhun took the lead early in the race, while Huang waited in the back for an opportunity.
He quickly moved up to second place with three laps to go, pushing Lin Xiaozhun back to third, and then immediately picked up the pace to take the lead.
With plenty of energy left in the tank, Hwang pulled away and crossed the line in first place, while Lin Xiaojun lost second place to Russell Felix (CAN) in the final corner and was forced to settle for third.
After a dominant race to advance to the final, Hwang capped his return to the World Cup Series after a one-year absence with a gold medal.
In the women’s 1,500-meter final, Kim Gil-ri (Seongnam City Hall) crossed the line in 2:28.012, trailing Hanner Desmut (Belgium-2:27.863) by 0.149 seconds to take the silver medal.
In the men’s 1,000-meter first race final, last year’s world champion Park Ji-won (Seoul City Hall – 1:24.903) edged out Canada’s Steven DuBois (1:24.916) by 0.013 seconds to take gold.
In the final of the women’s 1,000-meter race, Lee So-yeon (Sportsnet) and Seo Hwi-min (Korea University) finished second and third, respectively, to claim silver and bronze medals.
Lee and Seo were unfortunately denied a gold medal when they fell after being hit by Poland’s Kamila Stormowska, who tried to overtake them with two laps to go. 카지노사이트
The Korean team of Kim Gil-ri, Kim Gun-woo, Seo Ira (Hwaseong City Hall) and Shim Seok-hee (Seoul Metropolitan Government) had to settle for a silver medal in the mixed relay final, led by the Hungarian-Chinese siblings Shandor Liu and Saoang Liu.
Kim Gil-ri won two silver medals, one in the women’s 1,500 meters and the other in the mixed relay, while Lin Xiaojun ran in the Chinese mixed relay team to the semifinals but missed the final race.