South Korea will send 245 athletes to compete in 22 events at the London Olympics, officials said Wednesday, the smallest number since 210 attended the 1984 Los Angeles Games. But the Korea Olympic Committee (KOC) remained upbeat about its target of securing at least 10 golds and a finish inside the top 10 in the overall medal tally. “We have trained and prepared very hard to achieve our goal,” said team chief Lee Ki-Heung as he was presented with the national flag in a ceremony at Olympic Hall in eastern Seoul.
The South failed to qualify in basketball, tennis, equestrian events and canoeing. Its national sport, baseball, was dropped as an Olympic event. The KOC said the flag-bearer at the opening ceremony would be Yoon Kyung-Shin, a veteran of the men’s handball team who will be attending his fifth summer Olympics. The 39-year-old, who will be the oldest South Korean athlete in London, was also the flag-bearer at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian games. South Korea has ranked among the top 10 in medal standings in five of the past six summer Olympics.
China unveils smaller
London team: China has announced a far smaller team for the London Olympics than the one that topped the gold medal table at home four years ago, but expectations are high of another dominant performance. Just 396 Chinese athletes will go to London, down from a record-breaking 639 in Beijing and fewer even than the 407 who competed at the Athens Games in 2004. But sports officials emphasised that the London-bound team, unveiled at a ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday, was still China’s third-biggest for an Olympics and urged the athletes to bring their country glory. “The Chinese athletes must get fully prepared and ready to face the challenges. We have to fight for each gold,” Sports Minister Liu Peng said at the announcement ceremony.
