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Simon Cho's confidence suddenly makes him a short track speedskating world title contenderBy Amy Shipley / Washington Post Staff Writer / February 17, 2011
Laurel's Simon Cho could barely take himself seriously at last winter's Olympic Games in Vancouver. Just 18 years old, he felt like the short track speedskating team mascot, a little kid among veteran champions. He believed he was lucky to be there, and surely overmatched.
Yet the U.S. short track team head coach, Jae Su Chun, saw in the apprehensive Cho a superb athlete and perhaps the fastest short track skater . . . in the world. He figured Cho was merely a few major competitions away from becoming dominant in his sport.
A year later, Cho, who learned his craft at the former Wheaton Speedskating Club, no longer feels like Team USA's littlest brother. And Chun no longer sees only potential churning inside Cho's lanky six-foot, 160-pound frame. Last weekend in Moscow, Cho claimed the first major individual gold medal of his career, toppling a stacked field in the 500 meters at a world cup event.
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The victory, which came just weeks after he earned his first individual medal of any color - two silvers in Montreal in October - pushed Cho to the top of the International Skating Union World Cup Short Track standings in the mayhem-filled 500 with only one stop in the six-city series remaining.
"He's the fastest skater in the world," Chun said from Dresden, Germany. "He has good technique, too. He needed more experience and confidence. Last week [provided] a really, really important experience."
In Dresden this Friday and Saturday, Cho has a chance to clinch the individual 500 title; he leads Canadian Olympic star Charles Hamelin by nearly 300 points. It is a victory he could not have fathomed when he squeezed onto his first Olympic team just over a year ago, eventually earning a bronze medal as a member of a 5,000 relay team led by U.S. star Apolo Anton Ohno.
"Going into the Olympic Games, I was the youngest on the team," said Cho, now 19, sharing a video connection with Chun from Germany. "As far as confidence went, I didn't have very much of it. I considered myself the baby. After [those Games] I made some drastic changes. . . . Though it took a lot of physical effort, 90 percent of it was a mind game."
Even so, Cho admitted earlier this week that when he saw his name atop the world cup standings in the 500, he was taken aback. Cho knew he had climbed far, but that far, that fast?
"It actually surprised me," he said. "I expected probably I would be in third place at best. I saw my name, and was like, 'Wow.' . . . I have to dig deep if I want to get" the title.
And in mid-March, an even more tantalizing challenge awaits: the 2011 world championships in Sheffield, England. Chun said he believes Cho, who has never before competed in a senior individual championships, can contend not just for the 500 gold, but also for the world overall title, which has been won by just one American man in the last 35 years - Ohno in 2008.
"If he has the confidence, and if he not make mistakes, I'm very sure he can make the top three" skaters overall, Chun said. "If he is really good, it's very possible that he could win the world championship for overall."
Said Cho, who is ranked eighth in the world overall in the ISU standings for 2010-11: "I wasn't able to think about the world championships at the beginning of the season. It was still in its infancy. I still had to qualify. But for the last month and a half, I've been thinking about it constantly."
Cho had a rocky climb to last year's Olympic Games. His parents, who brought him to the United States - illegally - when he was a toddler, struggled to afford his speedskating expenses. Just two years before the last Winter Games, Cho, who had dropped out of high school to commit himself to training, quit the sport out of frustration and fatigue.
But months before the Olympic Trials in 2009, one of Cho's old coaches persuaded him to return to the sport, and his father to bear the expenses for just a bit longer. The family sold its restaurant in Upper Marlboro and moved out to Salt Lake City, and Cho rewarded his parents' sacrifice with an Olympic invitation none of them expected.
Yet he cowered among the world's best last winter. That attitude, he realized after returning from Vancouver, had to change. He would be in his speedskating prime - 22 years old - by the time the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, arrived. He expected to be a gold-medal contender by then - so why settle for a mix of potential and paralysis now?
"The Olympics was a really big hurdle to overcome, physically and emotionally," Cho said. "Once I overcome that, I had a new sense of confidence in myself and my ability . . . With the start of a new quadrennial, it was a good time for me to recharge my mind and body. Not only recharge, but also reset and change my goals, change my outlook on skating."
Cho remained in Salt Lake, living with his parents and training at the Utah Olympic Oval there, throughout the summer and fall. At the opening world cup in Montreal, he claimed silver medals in the 500 and 1,500. He advanced to the 500 B-final in Quebec, then the 500 quarterfinals in Changchun, China. And against an excellent field in Moscow, he won the gold.
He celebrated, he said, by . . . slapping hands with his coach. That was it.
"I tried not to be too external as far as the celebration," he said. "I was trying to keep it contained. There are still many things to be accomplished."[/img]