This story was first published on May 17, 2011.
(ATR) Olympic champion figure skater Yu Na Kim tells Around the Rings it is an "honor" to help her country win the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Kim spoke to ATR in Lausanne where she is to be one of six presenters for PyeongChang 2018 during the technical briefing Wednesday for IOC members. Annecy, Munich and PyeongChang will spend 90 minutes each with the IOC, behind closed doors at the Olympic Museum, explaining the nuts and bolts of their bids.
"It’s really an honor to be a part of this project, this big team," says Kim.
"There is a little bit of pressure because this is something new, speaking before 100 IOC members is a big event, not something everybody does," she says.
Kim, speaking in a soft voice, answered some questions in English, some in Korean, but says she has been practicing her speech to be delivered in English.
"I am more nervous than when I skate," she admitted, but added that her years of work as a skater have helped give her the confidence to succeed.
Kim, now 20, will be the youngest of the presenters for the South Korean bid, a panel that will include bid chair Yang Ho Cho, as well as the foreign minister and culture minister of Korea.
But she will not be the only famous figure skater speaking Wednesday to the IOC. The Munich bid includes chair Katarina Witt, who won the second of her Olympic gold medals two years before Kim was born in 1990.
"I met her in Vancouver last year for the first time. We said hello to each other," says Kim.
"Katarina was a great skater, a role model for me. I have watched her skate on video tape," she says.
But Kim dismisses talk that her appearance at the IOC Wednesday is a showdown between the two women. It will be Kim’s first appearance on behalf of the bid while Witt has been with the campaign for nearly two years.
"It’s about each of the bids, not a personality contest," says Kim.
"I represent the athletes in our bid. I will talk about our New Horizons concept and how it will inspire a new generation of athletes," she says.
Kim says bringing the Winter Olympics to PyeongChang will be an inspiration to young athletes in Korea.
"For every young athlete it is the biggest dream to have the Olympics in their home country, and then be lucky enough to compete," she says.
Kim, who won gold in Vancouver in 2010, took the silver medal in last month’s world championships, says she would like to skate before a hometown crowd. But she says she’s not at all certain whether she will be on the ice as a 27 year-old athlete if PyeongChang wins the 2018 Games.
"But maybe as a coach, a choreographer perhaps," she says.
Written and reported in Lausanne by Ed Hula.
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