Saturday was opening night for the short track speed skating competition at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  Apolo Ohno is the face of short track speed skating and he’s garnered medals from past Winter Olympics to the World Circuit.  The Koreans are considered the dominant country in the short track speed skating as they’ve revolutionized the sport, however, if you can’t beat’em, then go hire their coach and that’s what the U.S. team did.  However, the U.S. hopes to show the world that they’re more than just Apolo Ohno because their under the coaching of Jae Su Chun, the former coach of the South Korean team who happened to be dismissed prior to the Turin Olympics.  Jae Su Chun was picked up by the Canadian team and then soon found himself the head coach of the U.S. team.  Since 2007, coach Jae Su Chun has instilled the training techniques of the South Koreans and it has brought more of the team onto the medal podium in the World Circuit.  I’m going to guess that those training technique involves “over and over” again.

“At that time, the U.S. wasn’t really good. Only Apolo was good,” says Jae Su in English, his second language. “But, I found possibility.”

“When I came here, the team looked like kindergarten and Apolo looked like a university student,” Jae Su says. “So that first year was going from kindergarten to elementary school, the second year from elementary school to first year of high school. And the goal for this year was to bring them from high school to university.”

For the Vancouver Olympics, coach Jae Su Chun has big ambitions for the U.S. team.  He’s looking for the U.S. team to win more medals than ever at the Olympics, which would beat the previous best of four medals at the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

Source: Universal Sports