Training Hard for Gold Medals in the Ice Rink

 

The Ice Rink is standing on the bank of the River Pothong in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea. In the Ice Rink, we find skaters training hard, their bodies wet with sweat.

They are short-track speed skaters. They are training various technical skills including beeline linking and curve running. They are sliding on the ice tirelessly for one purpose.

“Let us honour the motherland with more gold medals.”

They are different in age and character, but there is one thing they have in common. It is the process of their growth as speed skaters. All of them developed their talents at the juvenile sports schools according to their hopes and trained themselves as skaters under the guidance of competent coaches of different sports teams.

Skater Choe Un Song came first in total in the men´s adult 500-metre, 1,000-metre and 1,500- metre events of the 2013 Danubia Cup and Slovakia Open Short-Track Speed Skating Games held in Slovakia in December last year. He is skater of the Jangjasan Sports Team. He is from Manpho City of Jagang Province in the northwestern part of the DPRK. He loved skating from his childhood and always dreamed to become a skater. His dream came true at 9. He learned short-track speed skating at the Manpho City Juvenile Sports School and became skater of the Jangjasan Sports Team at 16. Since then, he did not concede national championship. He participated in the short-track speed skating competition of the Republic Youth Championship in Juche 98 or 2009 for the first time, finished first in total in all events and thus became the youth champion of the national short-track speed skating.

Ju Yun Mi, skater of the Hwaebul Sports Team, Choe Sung of the Sports Team of the Pyongyang Railways Bureau, and Kim Jong Mi and Om Chol of the Jangsan Sports Team have also grown into skaters with similar career as Choe Un Song.

They say:

“We are grateful to our country for realizing our dreams and hopes. So we want to repay it.”

The desire to honour the motherland with gold medals prompts them to train hard in the ice rink.