Eh I don't agree. As I said, I think SoYeon Park and HaeJin Kim have a lot of promise. They didn't do that well at Jr. Worlds, but given their weird situation of having to skate WELL after their warm out due to the nuances of Milan's arena (i.e. the organization sucked) I'm not surprised that it didn't fare well with them.
Yuna basically gave these young girls the opportunity to get key experience. They have the goods -- SoYeon is a beautiful skater with great posture, musicality etc...and HaeJin is a little firecracker.
Also as I noted earlier---the burden for one skater to get three spots is VERY high. In fact, has any other skater managed to get three spots in the past? I honestly don't think so....
Ditto. We need to remember that Korea is not a big skating country, at least not until Yuna came around. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but there's practically no, or was no, infastructure to really support athletes in their continued growth. I mean, Yuna herself had to find coaching elsewhere because she wasn't able to get what she needed at home.
There are Olympic-level skaters in ALL countries, but what separates the successful from the unsuccessful is a strong support network and opportunity Yuna has made HUGE inroads in giving Korean skaters so much of that, and thanks to her, it will be possible for the talented skaters of her country to get the support and experience they need in order to succeed on the World level.
It's a continuing cycle. Athlete does well, earns support and visiblity for their sport. That in turn attracts more athletes, and those athletes attract better coaching. Those athletes do well, and the cycle is perpetuated. It's hard to get it started, but once you have a solid system in place it's easy to continue.
Look at gymnastics. Successful countries used to be confined to just a few. Then the Soviet Union fell apart and the talented coaches started migrating. Bela Karolyi moved to the US, Mary Lou became a star, and gymnastics BOOMED in the US. More coaches and gymnasts did well, the gymnasts became coaches themselves, and are now coaching the next generation of Olympic champions. The USA became extremely strong and have been able to establish a strong support system so that when the "foreign imports" retire, they will still have many talented coaches left to foster the next generation.
And look at Australia. They weren't really anything special in gymnastics until Sydney got the '00 Olympics and put out offers for a head coach to start developing their program. Peggy Liddick answered the call and Australia went from basically an un-known to having a team medal at Worlds and a World Champion, among other things. Because of that, more kids are doing gymnastics in Australia and their program is continuing to thrive.
It can work the other way too; Romania and Russia suffered a setback when they lost coaches and funding after the Soviet Union fell apart. But they have been putting their programs back together and because of their recent successes, they're starting to get more support at home which means better results down the road.
Sorry, this post is way long, but I had to ramble!
