Gangneung, Korea, January 24, 2024: Thailand is at the forefront of a winter sports push in southeast Asia that could produce more medals in the future.
This is the view of Kim Arram, team manager of the New Horizons Academy – part of the PyeongChang 2018 Legacy Foundation aimed at developing winter sports around the world.
One such beneficiary is Thailand, whose 17-year-old daredevil Agnese Campeol rocketed around the Alpensia Sliding Centre to win a silver medal in the women’s monobob at the Winter Youth Olympic Games.
“Thailand has been a huge success,” said Kim, at a press conference in the Main Media Centre of the Winter YOG on Wednesday.
“They started with two athletes in bobsled and are now bringing between 30 and 40 athletes for training in Korea in a variety of winter sports. They would call Korea their home.
“But Thailand is not the only country in the region that is taking an interest in the New Horizons Academy. We have helped Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia in the past five years.”
Kim said that the PyeongChang 2018 Legacy Foundation begins the process by contacting National Olympic Committees around the world, especially in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Students are recruited through the winter sports federations of the NOCs, or from the NOCs directly if winter sports federations do not exist.
“For the Winter YOG Gangwon 2024, we began with 100 young athletes from 26 or 27 different countries and exposed them to all seven winter sports,” added Kim.
“Then, based on data, we selected 30 of the students and gave them a designated sport. Our goal was to qualify 10 per cent of them to the Winter YOG, but we have overachieved and have 25 athletes here in six different sports.
“It was very unexpected that we had Agnese from Thailand and Jonathan Lourimi from Tunisia winning silver medals in monobob.”
Kim added that, if youngsters in Thailand and Tunisia were reading about the Winter YOG success and wanted to have a go at winter sports, they should contact their national federation to begin the process.
Who knows, it might lead to a silver medal at the Winter YOG – or even more thanks to the legacy foundation of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.