Today, at the Munhak Park Taehwan Swimming Arena, "Marine Boy" Taehwan Park won silver medal for men's medley relay swimming, 400 meter race. The Korean national swimming team touched the finish pad at 3 minutes and 39 seconds. This was Park's last race for the Incheon Asian Games (Asiad), and became the swimmer who won the most Asiad medals.
Park was the last to start racing in this relay race. The lineup for the Korean team composed of Sun-Gwan Park (backstroke), Ku-ong Choi (breaststroke), Kyu-Chul Jang (butterfly stroke) and Taehwan Park (freestyle). Korea was able to maintain 3rd place throughout most of the 400 meter race until most of the teams reached the 300 meter mark when China overtook Japan.
25-year-old Taehwan Park is one of the oldest swimmers to participate in the 2014 Asian Games. He had in fact talked of retiring after playing for Korea in the 2012 London Olympics, but many of his fans were happy to see him back in the water. Right before the 400 meter relay race, Park had participated in the 1,500 meter freestyle race where he won bronze medal for Korea.
In an interview with MBC, Park shared how his parents had first got him to start swimming to overcome his asthma. However, as time went by, his elementary school coach saw that Park had great talent and he was able to continue his swimming career, and in 2004 became Korea's youngest member of their national team.
After a disastrous debut at the 2004 Athens Olympics where he was disqualified for a false start during the men's freestyle 400 meter race, Park continued his training until he won 3 gold medals in the 2006 Doha Asian Games in Qatar where he was also named Asian Game MVP for that year's tournament. Later Park moved on to win the gold medal for men's freestyle 400 meters in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Park is the first Korean swimmer to be crowned Olympic gold medalist. 2 years later at the Gwangzhou Asian Games, Park added another 3 gold medals to his collection. Now he has a total of 20 Asiad medals.
After the race, Park told Yonhap how much more exhausted he felt compared to the 2006 Doha and 2010 Gwangzhou Asian Games tournaments, but thanks to the Korean fans who were supporting this whole time he was able to endure.
Meanwhile, the Chinese national team won gold medal after finishing the race in 3 minutes and 31 seconds.
