[파리올림픽]Taekwondo Park Tae-jun wins gold for the first time in 16 years…his first ever win in the 58kg class

▲Korea Tae-Jun Park, who participated in the men’s 58kg weight class quarterfinals in Taekwondo at the Paris 2024 Olympics, happy after winning against Syrian Rabe in France. [연합뉴스]
Park Tae-jun, the promising star of Korean men’s taekwondo, won an Olympic gold medal for the first time in 16 years as a Korean athlete.

Park Tae-jun, ranked 5th in the world, won by injury withdrawal Gasim Magomedov of Azerbaijan in the men’s 58 kg taekwondo final at the Paris 2024 Olympics held at the Grand Palais in Paris, France on the 7th local time.

With this, Taejun Park became the first Olympic gold medalist in this weight class.

‘Taekwondo star’ Lee Dae-hoon, the coach of Daejeon City Hall, won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012, which was a previous achievement.

Korea, which failed to win gold for the first time in its history at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, regained some of its pride as a fallen Taekwondo nation with Park Tae-jun’s gold medal.

It has been 16 years since a male Korean athlete won a gold medal.

Taejun Park stood on top of the podium for the first time since Taejin Son and Dongmin Cha at the 2008 Beijing Games.

For Park Tae-jun, who was first selected as a member of the 2022 national team while attending Hanseong High School, these Paris Games will be his first Olympics.

At the Olympic trials last February, he beat Jang Jun, ranked third in the world, and won a ticket to Paris.