
Originally Posted by
JonnyCoop
Oh, yeah, forgot about North Korea (which is pretty easy to do). They only pop up at the Olys on occasion (Torino and also Albertville) and any qualifying competition they need to get there. I suspect it's a question of finances; the North Korean federation probably has no money whatsoever and the IOC pays a lot of the tab for "developing nations" to travel to the Olys; Worlds, they're more or less on their own from that standpoint. I don't know how it works with the Asian Games. I would imagine they would be motivated to compete there, as a variation of "Look what our athletes can do under our system", like with East Germany and USSR in the Cold War days. Based on the results of competitions that North Korea actually does compete in, they certainly seem to have a fair amount of at least middling talent. (And has anyone else noticed how well the SOUTH Korean junior ladies have done this season?). At the 2005 Karl Schaefer (the qualifier for Torino), North Korea was 4th out of 21 in Men's, 2nd out of 23 in Ladies, and 8th out of 12 in Pairs, in all cases beating a lot of skaters from more "established" countries who had a lot more international experience.
I suspect that they may have done at least a little better in Torino (I think they were last in all categories, or 2nd to last at best) if they themselves had more international experience; it's really hard to go to the Olympics and skate well when you only get let out of your own country to skate once every 5 years or so; I should imagine it was a very overwhelming experience for them to be there, even more so than for other skaters who had never been to an Olys before.
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