High jumper Woo Sang-hyuk will participate in the Diamond League Finals in the early morning of the day after tomorrow (the 17th), becoming the first Korean track and field athlete to do so.안전놀이터
The prospect of the first medal also brightened as two rivals decided not to participate.
Woo Sang-hyuk, the star of Korean high jump, will compete in the final competition to determine the strongest of the World Association of Athletics Federations Diamond League in the early morning of the 17th.
Woo Sang-hyuk ranked third with 2m31 in the 2023 Zurich Diamond League held earlier this month, becoming the first Korean track and field athlete to advance to the finals.
The Diamond League, held 14 times a year, determines the final winner in the final competition between the top players who have accumulated the most ranking points throughout the year.
In this year’s high jump, six athletes, including Qatar’s Barsim, America’s Harrison, and Italy’s Tamberg, qualified to participate, and Woo Sang-hyuk earned a total of 20 points and was ranked fourth.
However, Barsim and Tamberi, the leading candidates for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics gold medal, both gave up participating in the finals.
Barshim, who won the finals three times in the past, previously selected the Hangzhou Asian Games as one of his most important goals this year, but gave up participating in the finals due to conditioning reasons.
Tamberg, who won the finals for two consecutive years until last year and won the gold medal at this year’s World Championships, is known to have ended the season early to prepare for next year’s Paris Olympics.
Instead, three more players were added, and based on this season’s best record, Woo Sang-hyuk is tied for second place with two other players, following Harrison with 2m36.
Woo Sang-hyuk also revealed his desire to win, saying that the Diamond League was the stage of his dreams.
<Woo Sang-hyuk / High Jump National Team> “There hasn’t been a single Korean athlete who has jumped on the diamond, and I am the only one… I really want to try (to win) because it was part of my dream.”
Regardless of the color, if he succeeds in winning a medal, Woo Sang-hyuk will once again decorate a page of Korean track and field history with the name of ‘first’.