Gwangju Readies for World Championships

(ATR) Organizers for the 2019 Aquatics World Championships tell Around the Rings that spending for the event is "really minimal" compared to the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Gwangju, South Korea will host the 2019 championships, the first major sporting event in the country since the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. Gwangju was awarded the championships in 2013, two years before the city hosted the 2015 Summer Universiade.

Young Tek Cho, the head of the organizing committee, told ATR in a recent interview that volunteers from the Winter Olympics and Universiade will contribute to the success of the event.

"The one factor that’s really important for determining the success [the championships] is the experienced staff," Cho said to ATR. "So those staff that worked for the Universiade they bring with them the knowledge and experience in organizing a major sporting event so they are the essence that is going to contribute to our success."

PyeongChang 2018 made headlines in South Korea this week after a report from the country’s largest newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, said provincial officials are dealing with an "Olympic hangover".

"Most of the Olympic legacies have either been demolished or are gathering dust, causing a tremendous amount of disappointment for local residents," Choi Moon-soon, governor of Gangwon Province, was quoted as saying in the report. "We need urgent financial support from the government."

Cho stressed to ATR that the budget for Gwangju 2019 was split evenly between the city government, the South Korean government, and the organizing committee. The aquatics center used for the championships was already built for the 2015 Universiade and only needed to be expanded. For other events, such as the high dive, temporary facilities are being used to control costs.

"We just had the PyeongChang Olympics, and compared to that championship spending ours is really minimal, so city government and central government and the organizing committee is very comfortable with our budget plan," Cho said.

Organizers are targeting two legacies from Gwangju 2019. The first is upgrades to the minimal aquatics infrastructure in Gwangju. Those upgrades will help the second legacy, which is improving amateur swim clubs in the city and encouraging young South Koreans to pursue aquatics at a high level.

Cho says that South Korea does not have "star athletes" in aquatics, and hopes young South Koreans are inspired by the foreign star athletes coming. Organizers expect between 4,000 and 5,000 athletes to compete at the championships, and an additional 10,000 athletes will compete in the masters championships in the weeks after.

Nearly all of the top medal contenders for Tokyo 2020 will be competing at Gwangju 2019. To house the athletes, Gwangju built a "world championship village" that can accommodate up to 6,000 athletes and officials. The village will be used as apartments for Gwangju after the events.

"It is going to be returned to the citizens, not only to help regenerate our city area but help our city," Cho said.

Continuing the trend of inter-Korean sporting diplomacy, Cho expects North Korean athletes to compete in Gwangju. He said that there are some strong North Korean divers who will qualify.

The International Aquatics Federation (FINA) and the South Korean Unification Ministry have been working to bring the athletes across the border for the event. Cho said that Gwangju 2019 has "high expectations [about the] possibility" of the North Koreans competing at the event.

At PyeongChang 2018 North and South Korea combined to march during the opening ceremony under a unification flag for the third time in Olympic history. The countries fielded a combined women’s hockey team, the first such joint Korean team in Olympic competition.

The sporting diplomacy continued at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia. The two Koreas entered unified teams in women’s basketball, canoeing, and rowing, winning four medals. The women’s basketball team won a silver medal, while combined dragon boat teams won a gold and two bronzes.

"Korea is the only divided nation in the world," Cho said. "We are trying to bring up this point to the world and promote our event as a peacemaking world championships and hope through our championships we can settle the good relations we have developed with North Korea."

Written by Aaron Bauer

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