Swimming sensation Hwang Sun-woo (20, Gangwon Provincial Office) overcame a food poisoning scare to win five medals at the National Games.
Hwang, along with Song Im-kyu, Choi Dong-yeol, and Yang Jae-hoon (all of Gangwon Provincial Office), won gold in the 400-meter medley relay final of the men’s general category at the 104th Jeonnam National Games at the Mokpo Indoor Pool in Mokpo, Jeollanam-do, South Korea, in a meet record time of 3:36.50, beating the Incheon team (3:44.34).Hwang Sun-woo earned his second five-medal victory of the meet, joining men’s high school diving champion Choi Kang-in (Yulgok Go).
The medley relay is a team event in which four athletes compete in backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle, and Hwang led the final race as a freestyle runner.Hwang suffered a high fever, upset stomach, and body aches after eating the wrong food in Mokpo, Jeollanam-do, the day before the start of the competition. It was food poisoning.
Despite competing in the worst possible condition, Hwang won gold in the 800-meter freestyle relay on the 15th, the 200-meter freestyle on the 16th, the 400-meter freestyle on the 17th, and the 100-meter freestyle on the 18th, and performed “golden backstroke” for five consecutive days until the 19th, the closing day of the competition.
It’s been two years since Hwang won five medals at the Games, which he competed in as a high school student in 2021.He also won five medals last year, but was denied gold in the 400-meter medley relay on the final day due to a false start by a teammate.
Hwang is now in contention to win the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for the third consecutive Games after winning it in 2021 and 2022.The KOC hasn’t named a national championship MVP since the 61st Games in 1980, and no athlete has won the honor for three consecutive years in more than 40 years.
Swimmer Park Tae-hwan won the MVP award a record five times (2005, 2007, 2008, 2013, and 2017), but narrowly missed out on back-to-back titles when he lost the award to Kim Deok-hyun, who broke the Korean record in the triple jump in 2006.
The MVP will be voted on by the journalists. As of 11:30 on the 19th, only Hwang Sun-woo has won five medals.Considering that diving has a large gap in skill between the general and high school divisions, Hwang’s chances of 슬롯게이밍 winning are high.