‘Team Kim (Gangneung City Hall)’, who aims to reproduce the ‘Pyeongchang Myth’, stands at the crossroads of the Olympic medal challenge for two consecutive Olympic Games on the 16th.
Team Kim, consisting of Eun-Jeong Kim, Kyung-Ae Kim, Seon-Young Kim, Young-Mi Kim, and Cho-Hee Kim, will compete in the 7th and 8th rounds of the women’s curling group qualifiers for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to be held at the National Aquatic Center in Beijing, China on the 16th. Team Kim will play the 7th game against Switzerland at 10:05 am on the same day and the 8th game against Denmark at 9:05 pm. The two preliminaries on this day are the main battlefield for ‘Team Kim’ to advance to the semifinals.
Team Kim won the 6th game against Japan 10-5 on the 14th and managed to save the spark for the tournament. In this competition, 10 countries play a full league, and the top 4 countries play a semifinal tournament to determine the rankings. Among them, Tim Kim recorded 3 wins and 3 losses in Game 6 and is tied for fifth place alongside England and Canada. Team Kim has three games remaining until the final day of the full league, against Sweden on the 17th, and must win at least two wins to continue the possibility of the quarterfinals.
On the other hand, Korea succeeded in the last attempt by winning the ‘Fateful Korea-Japan Battle’ after a long time. Korea lost back to back 4-8 and 5-8 to Japan in the preliminary and final rounds of the Olympic Qualifications Championships held in the Netherlands in December last year. But at the Olympics, Korea laughed. In the previous Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in 2018, Korea defeated Japan in the semifinals and cut off tickets to the finals.
Skip Eun-Jung Kim, who played an active part in the 6th game, said about the factors for winning the Japanese match immediately after the match, “At that time (Olympic qualification competition), I was very nervous because I had to qualify for the Olympics. I played while thinking about the parts that didn’t go well in the game,” he explained. Manager Immyung-seop vowed, “If we win all three matches, we will be able to advance to the semifinals on our own, so we will analyze the remaining opponents such as Switzerland well.” Prior to participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics, attention is focused on whether ‘Team Kim’, who made a determination to “never give up until the end”, will rise above the crisis on the 16th.
‘Team Kim’ said in an exclusive interview with this magazine earlier, “I will show you my best by not giving up until the end.” Seunghwan Jeong