Short Track Skater Choi Min-jung Wins 5 Gold Medals at Four Continents Championships... Inaugural Overall Champion

Choi Min-jeong is leading the women's 1000m at the 1st ISU Four Continents Short Track Speed Skating Championships.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Kim Sung-yeol] Choi Min-jung (Seongnam City Hall), the women's short track speed skating national team member, set a record by winning all events at the Four Continents Championships.

On the 13th (Korean time), Choi Min-jung won the women's 1000m, women's 3000m super final, and women's 3000m relay on the last day of the 1st International Skating Union (ISU) Short Track Four Continents Championships held in Montreal, Canada.

Including the women's 1500m and women's 500m on the previous day (the 12th), she took gold medals in all five events in the women's category.

On this day, Choi Min-jung won the women's 1000m with a time of 1 minute 32.712 seconds.

With three laps remaining to the finish line, Choi took the outside course and moved up to second place. Then, with one lap left, she accelerated again on the outside course, overtaking Canada's Courtney Sarault, who was in the lead, to claim first place. In the same race, Kim A-lang (Goyang City Hall) won the bronze medal with a time of 1 minute 33.108 seconds.

Choi Min-jung, who won all three individual events, also took first place in the women's 3000m super final, which features the top eight skaters.

She led from the early stages of the race, creating a two-lap gap from other competitors, and claimed the gold medal with a time of 5 minutes 17.130 seconds. Kim A-lang finished second with 5 minutes 34.507 seconds, and Seo Hwi-min (Pyeongchon High School) took third with 5 minutes 34.600 seconds.

In the women's 3000m relay, Choi Min-jung teamed up with Kim A-lang, Kim Ji-yoo (Seongnam City Hall), and Noh Ah-reum (Jeonbuk Provincial Office), adding another gold medal by finishing with a time of 4 minutes 11.404 seconds, ahead of Canada and China.

Thanks to winning all events, Choi Min-jung became the inaugural champion with a total of 136 points in the overall standings. Seo Hwi-min ranked second with 47 points, and Kim A-lang placed fourth with 42 points.

After the competition, Choi Min-jung said, "It is especially meaningful to win at the first event of the new year and the inaugural competition. Thanks to the support, I was able to win after a long time," adding, "I will show a good performance at the World Championships in March."

Meanwhile, the newly established Four Continents Championships this year is a competition where athletes from the four non-European continents?Asia, America, Africa, and Oceania?compete.

The competition awards points based on the final rankings of the 500m, 1000m, and 1500m events, and the top eight scorers advance to the 3000m super final.

The overall ranking of the competition is then determined by the total points accumulated across the four events.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.