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More S Koreans could follow Ahn’s example

More Olympic athletes are set to ditch their South Korean passports and compete for rival nations unless the country’s skating union (KSU) reforms, the father of Korea’s greatest sporting defector has told Reuters.

Anger with the KSU has boiled among Koreans following Ahn Hyun-soo’s defection to Russia in 2011 - and was only exacerbated when the 28-year-old won his fourth, fifth and sixth Olympic gold medals in Sochi under the name Viktor Ahn, and as a Russian competitor.

It was a painful episode for a proud country. Ahn had won his first three golds as a South Korean at the Turin Olympics in 2006, but then came quarrels and clashes, failure to qualify for the 2010 Games and the decision to quit Korea and become a Russian citizen.

It was a huge step, but one others may soon take, Ahn’s father told Reuters, claiming that more are ready to follow his son out the door and into the arms of other nation’s unless the Seoul-based skating union sorts itself out.

“I assure you, and I am saying this with confidence, there are some parents whose children won medals at the Olympics and who have told me if the KSU keeps going like this, they are also considering switching nationalities,” Ahn Ki-won told Reuters.

Speaking at his local rink he said he would not allow his youngest son, Hyun-jun, another promising young short track speed skater with Olympic ambitions, to go through the same torment as his older brother, who he still refers to as “Hyun-soo” rather than “Viktor”.

“If the KSU refuses to reform and goes on the way it has, I’m considering switching my youngest son’s nationality to give him a better opportunity. I’m not doing all this for Hyun-soo, I’m doing this for Hyun-jun. I’m doing this for the next generation of South Korean skaters.”

Ahn Ki-won, who has been highly critical of the KSU for a number of years, told Reuters his son had been shunned, bullied and beaten in the Korean team, and that the poisonous atmosphere had eventually driven him to turn his back on his homeland. The skater’s trio of golds in Sochi in February sparked a furious backlash in South Korea. Irate fans vented their fury at the KSU, and the nation’s President Park Geun-hye demanded to know how the country could let one of the greatest Olympians of all time slip through its fingers.

His father said factional divisions and power struggles within the KSU were tearing the heart out of the Korean short track team, where bias and favouritism had led to athletes turning on one another.

The switch to Russia came after Ahn had failed to make the Korean team for the 2010 Vancouver Games. A serious knee injury in 2008 left him short on fitness for the national trials and despite his pedigree the KSU left him out in the cold. Given his history with the KSU, Ki-won believed his son would struggle to get the support, or the opportunity, he needed to return to the pinnacle of the sport in Korea, so he arranged a training stint in Russia through his coaching connections.

Ahn agreed to go to Moscow in the summer of 2011 just to train but was immediately overwhelmed by the support and positive atmosphere in Russia. By December, the Kremlin had fast-tracked his citizenship and “Ahn Hyun-soo” became “Viktor Ahn”.

His father said they had also been in talks with the United States and Canada about a switch, but the Russian offer ticked all the boxes — both financially and in a sporting sense. Ahn and his new country reaped instant rewards, winning gold medals galore at the Olympics and World and European Championships.

“As a parent, it feels so bad to see my son switching his nationality and skating for Russia because it is South Korea where he was born and raised and skated,” said Ki-won. “When Hyun-soo was kissing the ice in Sochi, I asked him why did he do that. He told me: ‘Everyone said I was finished. I proved them all wrong.’”