Korean men win the Asian Championships for the first time in 7 years. “I am satisfied that I have proven my qualifications for the Olympics.”
Kim Yu-ro, national cyclist competing in the Paris Olympics
At the Paris Olympics, which is just 40 days away, the road cycle individual road event has the longest course among all competitions. The men’s race is 273km long.
The course is longer than the distance from Seoul to Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, which faces the east coast.
Starting from Paris, France, athletes cross 13 mountainous terrains and return to Paris where the finish line is set.
Athletes will cross the finish line after passing through world-famous tourist attractions such as the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre Museum, and the Eiffel Tower in Montmartre.
In Korea, Kim Yu-ro (Korea Land and Infrastructure) is participating in this race.
Kim Yu-ro is a mid-to-long distance specialist. He originally started out as a road athlete, but after joining his corporate team, he focused on track and became a middle- and long-distance runner.
At the Hangzhou Asian Games held last year, he competed in the Madison track event and won a silver medal.
As such, I am not used to long-distance races exceeding 270 km.
Kim Yu-ro met with Yonhap News at Incheon International Airport on the 14th and said, “I understand that this Olympics has the longest individual road course among all competitions in history. In fact, I have never raced a distance of 270 km, so it is a challenge for me.“
At the same time, he said, “It is a burdensome distance for a cyclist to feel, but it is my duty as a national team athlete to prepare faithfully, devote myself to training, and try to achieve the best results.”
Kim Yu-ro is currently the best road cyclist among Korean male athletes. He proudly won the individual road event at the 2024 Asian Road Cycling Championships held in Almaty, Kazakhstan on the 12th.
The 158km section was covered in 3 hours, 21 minutes and 4 seconds.
In the last lap, 16 people competed as a leader group, and as a track athlete, they showed off their remaining strength and sprinted to become the final winner.
It has been 7 years since Park Sang-hong (Korea Land and Infrastructure) in 2017 that a Korean male athlete won the individual road event at this competition.
Kim Yu-ro said, “There are many outstanding senior players on the national team, so I actually felt a lot of pressure as I received a ticket to Paris. However, by winning this Asian Championships, I was satisfied that I had shown to some extent that I was qualified to participate in the Olympics.“
He continued, “It is not easy to win the Asian Championships in the road event. I never expected to win, so it still doesn’t feel real to me,” but added, “The gap between Asia and the world is big. With the idea of going up one step at a time ( “I’m trying to prepare well for the Olympics,” he added.
The center of the current cycle is Europe. Korea, which is classified as a periphery, has never won an Olympic medal in cycling.
Kim Yu-ro also knows that his chances of winning a medal at the Olympics, where world-class athletes participate, are not high. Still, Kim Yu-ro plans to use her Olympics as a stage for meaningful challenges.
He said, “There were many cases in our country where we could not even participate in the Olympics. Therefore, I hope that my participation in the Olympics will serve as an opportunity for our country’s cycling sport to develop and become known to people.”
Kim Yu-ro, who loves cycling and rides his bike to various places, including the mountains and the sea, on his days off, reminisces on the memory of competing in a club competition with his father when he was in the 6th grade of elementary school, and takes part in competitions every time. 고스톱