Hosting 1st Winter Olympics voted top S. Korean sports news story of '18

SEOUL, Dec. 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's hosting of its first Winter Olympics topped the list of the country's most memorable sports news stories of 2018, as compiled by Yonhap News Agency on Monday.

In a survey of 57 South Korean newspapers and broadcasters from Dec. 7-12, the successful staging of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics earned 505 points to finish first.

A first-place vote was worth 10 points, with a second-place vote good for nine points, and so forth. PyeongChang 2018 received 44 first-place votes.

PyeongChang, a resort town located 180 kilometers east of Seoul, won the bid to host a Winter Olympics on its third try in 2011. Along with the adjacent towns of Gangneung and Jeongseon, PyeongChang hosted nearly 3,000 athletes from 92 nations. There were a record 102 gold medals at stake.

Host South Korea grabbed five gold medals and set its Winter Olympics record with 17 medals in total to finish seventh in the medal table. For the first time, South Korea captured medals in non-skating events, with a gold by Yun Sung-bin in men's skeleton and silver medals in women's curling, four-man bobsleigh and men's snowboarding.

And PyeongChang 2018 was historic for South Korea on other levels.

South Korea and North Korea marched together behind the Korea Unification Flag at the opening ceremony, marking their first joint march at an international multisport event since 2007. They also assembled a joint team in women's hockey, and the combined squad of 23 South Koreans and 12 North Koreans was hailed as an inspirational symbol of peace.

The Koreas built on that momentum and remained actively engaged in sports cooperation, and this cooperation ranked second on Yonhap's list of top sports news stories.

Three months after PyeongChang 2018, the Koreas brought their women's teams together at the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Halmstad, Sweden. They won bronze after losing to Japan in the semifinals.

Then in July, the Koreas fielded four unified teams at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Tour Platinum Korea Open in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul. The mixed doubles team of Jang Woo-jin (South) and Cha Hyo-sim (North) won gold medal there, and they followed that up with silver medals at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Incheon, just west of Seoul on Saturday.

At the Asian Games held in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia, from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, the Koreas had joint teams in women's basketball, rowing and canoeing's dragon boat racing. They captured one gold and two bronze medals in dragon boat racing and silver in women's basketball.

The Koreas have agreed to work toward co-hosting the 2032 Summer Olympics and fielding more joint teams at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and Summer Paralympics.

Sandwiched between the Winter Olympics and the Asian Games on the international sporting calendar was the FIFA World Cup in Russia.

South Korea, playing in their ninth consecutive World Cup, failed to survive the group stage after managing just one win against two losses, but that lone victory came at the expense of the defending champions Germany in the group finale. South Korea's roller coaster ride ranked third on Yonhap's list.

South Korea dropped the opener to Sweden 1-0 and fell to Mexico 2-1. With hopes of reaching the round of 16 all but dashed, South Korea held Germany scoreless through 90 minutes before breaking through with consecutive stoppage-time goals by Kim Young-gwon and Son Heung-min. South Korea went down fighting and dragged the mighty Germans with them.

During PyeongChang 2018, the South Korean women's curling team was a pleasant surprise. But only a few months later, the curlers made shocking allegations that they had been verbally and emotionally abused by their coach and other senior officials of the sport. It forced the sports ministry and the national Olympic committee to launch a joint investigation. Kim Kyung-doo, former vice president of the Korean Curling Federation (KCF) at the center of the controversy, issued an apology and vowed to leave the sport entirely.

Speed skating wasn't immune from problems. Former women's short track coach Cho Jae-beom was sentenced to 10 months in prison in September for assaulting multiple athletes, including two-time Olympic champion Shim Suk-hee. On the long track, long-distance specialist Kim Bo-reum was embroiled in a bullying scandal after leaving behind teammate Noh Seon-yeong during the team pursuit race at the Olympics. The situation involved a great deal of "he said, she said" exchanges, before the sports ministry concluded in May that there was no premeditated bullying.

These developments placed fourth on Yonhap's rankings.

Five South Koreans appeared in a Major League Baseball game in 2018, but none was bigger than Ryu Hyun-jin's World Series start for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Boston Red Sox on Oct. 24.

Ryu became the first South Korean pitcher to start a World Series game when he took the mound in Game 2 at Fenway Park in Boston. It was fifth on Yonhap's sports news rankings.

After giving up a run in 4 2/3 innings, Ryu was the losing pitcher as the Dodgers fell 4-2. They lost the World Series in five games.

Ryu enjoyed a fine regular season, going 7-3 with a 1.97 ERA in 15 starts while recording 89 strikeouts in 82 1/3 innings.

Ryu will be back with the Dodgers for one more season after accepting the qualifying offer of US$17.9 million instead of testing the open market as a free agent.

While Ryu excelled on the big league mound, Son Heung-min continued to thrive on the Premier League pitch for Tottenham Hotspur. He scored his 100th European goal on Dec. 5, a feat that ranked sixth on Yonhap's list.

Son is the second South Korea to reach the century mark in goals in Europe, after Cha Bum-keun, who had 121 goals at European competitions in the 1980s.

Son also starred for South Korea at the Asian Games, helping the men's football team win gold medals. The baseball team also won gold there, but it wasn't celebrated as a champion because of controversy surrounding the roster selection.

Manager Sun Dong-yol took heat for picking what many felt were undeserving players to give them a chance to earn exemptions for the mandatory military service. In November, two months after leading South Korea to gold, Sun resigned from the national team job. The aftermath ranked seventh in Yonhap's rankings.

Rounding out the top 10 were: young tennis player Chung Hyeon reaching the semifinals at the Australian Open; South Korean football coach Park Hang-seo enjoying success with upstart Vietnamese men's national team; and the SK Wyverns winning the Korean Series for their first Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) championship since 2010.

Chung became the first South Korean to make the final four at a Grand Slam tournament. He knocked out Novak Djokovic in the round of 16 on his way to the semifinals, where he was forced to retire against Roger Federer due to foot blisters.

Park Hang-seo emerged as a national icon in Vietnam for taking the country's under-23 and senior men's football teams to unprecedented heights. He led the U-23 team to second place at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) U-23 Championship in January. Then at the Asian Games in Indonesia, Vietnam lost to Park's native South Korea 3-1 in the semifinals and fell to the United Arab Emirates 4-3 in the penalty shoot-out in the bronze medal match. Before this year, Vietnam had never made it past the round of 16 at their four previous Asian Games appearances.

Park guided Vietnam to the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki Cup title over Malaysia on Saturday for the country's first regional title in 10 years.

The Wyverns finished 14 games behind the Doosan Bears for second place in the KBO regular season but flipped the script in the Korean Series, where they prevailed in six games. In that clinching game, the Wyverns were trailing 4-3 in the top of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes, before Choi Jeong blasted a game-tying solo home run off Josh Lindblom.

Then in the top of the 13th, Han Dong-min smacked a go-ahead solo shot. Starter Kim Kwang-hyun came out of the bullpen and recorded three outs for the Wyverns in the bottom 10th to close out the series.

SK's American manager Trey Hillman became the first foreign skipper to win a Korean Series title. He left the team after the season to spend more time with his ailing parents back home, and was recently named first base coach for the Miami Marlins.

jeeho@yna.co.kr
(END)