‘Super thrilled and overjoyed’ Winnipeg’s Skylar Park battles to taekwondo bronze at Paris Olympic Games
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This article was published 08/08/2024 (738 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
PARIS — Skylar Park has an Olympic medal around her neck and a heart full of gratitude after battling through a turbulent and emotional taekwondo tournament to take bronze at the Paris 2024 Summer Games.
The 25-year-old from Winnipeg defeated Laetitia Aoun of Lebanon 2-0 to win her first Olympic medal in the 57-kilogram event, staged in the soaring main hall of the Grand Palais in central Paris Thursday.
“It feels amazing,” Park told the Free Press after receiving her hardware, complete with a piece of the Eiffel Tower embedded in its centre.
“I’m super thrilled and overjoyed.”
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Skylar Park battles with Laetitia Aoun during the bronze medal match at the Summer Olympics in Paris.
It was was a moment of pure joy and gratitude on the podium, said Park — both for her family and the experience of competing in the “perfect” atmosphere of the Grand Palais, in which finalists enter the arena from the top of the hall’s imposing main staircase.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Obviously, you always want to be on the top step of the podium, but, I mean, I’m just so grateful to be here,” she said.
“My family and I have gone through so much over these past eight months to be here.”
Park, who has trained since childhood for the Olympic stage with her father and coach Jae Park at their south Winnipeg taekwondo academy, said the medal is a win for her entire family, all of whom are black belts.
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Skylar embraces her coach and dad Jae Park after defeating Laetitia Aoun to win the bronze medal Thursday. 
Brothers Braven and Tae-Ku (the latter travelled as official training partner with Team Canada to Paris) have also represented Canada as members of the senior national taekwondo team and narrowly missed out on a spot at the Summer Games.
“We’ve always worked as one and as a team,” Park said. “It was a commitment that we all made and work that we all put in to achieve this. So this medal is won by Team Park, for sure.”
Park, a two-time Olympian, took the first medal round against Aoun by notching more hits than her opponent, despite not scoring any points. In Round 2, she scored a three-point head kick early and forced a penalty on Aoun to lead 4-0 with half a minute remaining. Park took two penalties in the final seconds to finish the round victorious with a 4-2 score.
After the final buzzer, she was quick to embrace her dad on the sidelines before taking a lap around the mats with the Canadian flag draped over her shoulders.
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Skylar Park celebrates after defeating Laetitia Aoun.
“Just winning that bronze medal, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” said an exhausted but elated Jae Park. “Having my whole family here, just enjoying it together and having the team surrounding us, it’s amazing.”
His daughter’s poise, confidence and control over the medal match, despite some nerves and the fatigue of fighting eight rounds over a 17-plus hour day, was impressive, he said.
“You know you’ve got to rise to the occasion, and especially (in) the Olympics, anything can happen,” he said. “You’ve got to be ‘on’ that day and you’ve got to have a little bit of luck on your side, as well, and we had both.”
And while Park was a medal favourite, entering the Summer Games ranked fourth in the world, an appearance on the podium was put into question early Thursday after she was defeated in the quarter-final 2-0 (6-7, 5-9) by eventual gold medalist Yujin Kim of South Korea.
It was a devastating loss, Park said, and ended her dream of an Olympic gold in Paris.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS TRP Academy head instructor Steven Rivest and kids in the summer camp in Winnipeg watch Skylar Park receive her bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. 
It also meant her chance at a repechage round depended on the Korean advancing to the final. In Olympic taekwondo, two repechages are held to decide two bronze medalists.
The system is intended to give competitors who may have been drawn against the top contender in earlier rounds a fair chance at a medal. Contenders defeated by the finalists in the quarter and semifinals are matched to determine two third-place winners.
Fortunately for Park, Kim beat No.1-ranked Zongshi Luo of China in a tight, three-round semifinal match.
“That was really motivating for me and just made me fully focused on the task at hand, and I was really hungry for that medal,” Park said.
“Those last two matches are a good representation of that.”
Park earned her place in the bronze match with a decisive 2-0 (6-4, 3-2) win over Turkiye’s Hatice Kubra Ilgun in the repechage. It was a roller-coaster of emotions, nerves and anticipation, but one Park said she handled well.
“I have grown so much over the past three years and worked so hard with my team and my family to be able to deal with that,” she said.
Earlier in the day, to open her Olympic tournament, Park defeated No. 13-ranked Dominika Hronova of Czechia in two rounds (6-2, 4-3) in the knockout stage.
Park’s medal is the first for a Canadian in taekwondo since 2008, when Karine Sergerie won silver in the 67-kilogram event in Beijing. The bronze pushed Team Canada’s overall medal count to 21 Thursday.
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Skylar Park on the podium with her bronze medal in the women’s 57kg repechage.
“I’m so thankful for all of Canada. We’ve truly felt the support while we’ve been here,” Park said. “Even after Tokyo (2020) when I fell short, I still felt all the love and support, so I think that gave me a lot of confidence coming into this tournament, knowing that they have my back no matter what, allowed me to fight my best and fight free.”
Park said she planned to celebrate the medal with her family on the Champs-Elysee Thursday night.
Her dad was already planning the next move for Team Park.
“It’s not done. We haven’t closed the book,” he said. “This is just one notch that we can actually add to motivate us to even train harder and go further.
“I don’t know if we can dedicate ourselves even more than what we have, but we will surely try.”
fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
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