Korean Track and Field Men's 400m Relay Attempts to Qualify for Olympics for the First Time in 36 Years
If you place in the top 14 at the World Relay Championships in the Bahamas on May 5-6, you will go to Paris.
The Korean track and field men's 400m relay team aims to advance to the Olympic finals for the first time in 36 years.
The Korea Athletics Federation will dispatch the men's 400m relay team to the 2024 World Relay Championships to be held in Nassau, Bahamas on May 5-6 (Korean time).
A total of five events will be held in this competition, including the men's and women's 400m and 1,600m relays, and the mixed 1,600m relay. 파워볼
Korea only participates in the men's 400m relay.
If you place in the top 14 in each event at the Bahamas Games, you will receive a ticket to the Paris Olympics.
A total of 32 countries will participate in the men's 400m relay, and the final ranking will be determined through preliminaries, repechage, and finals.
Korea includes Kim Kuk-young (33), who holds the Korean men's 100m record (10.07 seconds), Kim Tae-hyo (31), Ko Seung-hwan (26), Lee Jae-seong (22, Gwangju Metropolitan City Hall), Lee Jun-hyuk (23, Armed Forces Athletic Corps), and Lee Si-mon. (23, Anyang City Hall) formed a 400m relay team of 6 people.
The race is played by four people, but relay members can be replaced in the preliminaries, repechage, and finals.
Among them, Kim Kook-young, Ko Seung-hwan, and Lee Jae-seong teamed up to win a bronze medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games held last year.
In the finals of the Asian Games held on October 3, 2023, Korea ran in the order of Lee Jeong-tae, Kim Kuk-young, Lee Jae-seong, and Ko Seung-hwan, crossing the finish line in 38.74 seconds and taking third place.
38.74 seconds is a Korean record tied by Oh Kyung-soo, Cho Gyu-won, Kim Kuk-young, and Joshua in 2014.
The Korean track and field men's 400m relay team won an Asian Games medal for the first time in 37 years since the 1986 Seoul Games, when Seong Nak-gyun, Jang Jae-geun, Kim Jong-il, and Shim Deok-seop ran.
With a record of 38.74 seconds, the Korean men's 400m relay team was ranked 22nd in the 'Paris Olympic rankings'.
Only by improving his ranking to 14th in Nassau, Bahamas, will he be able to qualify for the Paris Olympics, which he desperately wants.
The first and last time Korean track and field participated in the Olympics in the relay event was at the 1988 Seoul Games as the host country.
At that time, Korea participated in four events, the men's and women's 400m and 1,600m relays.
The men's 400m relay advanced to the semifinals, and the other three events were eliminated in the preliminary round.
The road to Paris is not easy.
Teams with better skills than Korea, such as the United States, which has a national team centered around Noah Lyles, the best current men's sprinter, and Jamaica, with the 'nova' Achim Blake, as well as Japan, which is world-class in the men's 400m relay, have qualified for the Paris Olympics.
For this purpose, elite members were selected for the Bahamas competition.
However, the Korea Athletics Federation actively supported the training of the relay team, and the team members are also working hard to 'break the Korean record' and 'qualify for the Paris Olympics.'
In particular, Kim Kook-young, who competed in the men's 100m at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, said, "Personally, I think this is my last chance to compete in the Olympics.
I will work hard with my juniors."