The next Yuna Kim? 5 facts about South Korean ice skating star Young You – from childhood in Singapore to Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 hopes
Young You won the South Korean Figure Skating Championship aged 11, and is only the 11th female skater to land a feared triple axel in competition – will she repeat the feat at Beijing 2020?
As the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is fast approaching, the pressure is on and the question on everyone’s lips is – will she prove as successful as the country’s previous Olympic gold medallist, celebrity skater Yuna Kim? Well – she’s off to a good start …
She broke Yuna Kim’s record as the youngest champion to win at the South Korean Figure Skating Championships
In 2016, Young won first place in the South Korean Figure Skating Championship as an 11-year-old (yes, 11!), breaking Yuna Kim’s record as the competition’s youngest champion. Young was inspired to become a figure skater after seeing Yuna win at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver – little did she know that she would eventually break one of her role model’s records.
She recalls the moment when her childhood idol awarded her the medal. “My heart stopped. She told me ‘good job’ and it meant so much to me,” she said later.
She is the only Korean female skater to have mastered the triple axel
Young’s skating skills are beyond. She jumped the feared triple axel – regarded as figure skating's oldest and most difficult jump – in the 2019 Grand Prix Skate Canada, becoming only the 11th female skater to land a triple axel in an official tournament. Many fans are keen to see if Young will perform a successful triple axel in the upcoming Olympics – a feat only three skaters, Midori Ito, Mao Asada and Mirai Nagasu, have successfully achieved. Young also ambitiously spoke of her goal to perform quadruple jumps at the Beijing Winter Olympics.