'Cabbage Boy' Snowboard Lee Sang-ho is now determined by a single match... Going to the round of 16 with Kim Sang Gyeom in 6th place [Milan Olympics]

*This content was translated by AI.

"Cabbage Boy" Lee Sang-ho (31, Nexen-Wingard) made the final stage with a green light.

Lee Sang-ho finished sixth with a combined time of 1:26.74 in the first and second periods in the men's parallel snowboarding competition at the 2026 Milan-Cortina D'Ampezzo Winter Olympics held at Lvigno Snowpark in Italy on the 8th, reaching the final round of 16 players.

The snowboard parallel competition is a one-on-one match in which two athletes start simultaneously on two parallel writing courses (blue and red). In the preliminary round, the two courses were alternately run and the records were summed to determine the ranking.

The final round, in which the top 16 players play, starts with the round of 16 from 9:24 p.m. and determines the winner with a single round match from the round of 16. The final is scheduled for 10:36 p.m.

Lee Sang-ho, who is from Gangwon-do Province and was nicknamed "Cabbage Boy" after growing up training in the highland cabbage field in Jeongseon-gun as a child, won a silver medal in this event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games and shot the first silver medal in Korean snow events.

His subsequent moves were regrettable. At the 2022 Beijing Games, he passed the preliminary round as No. 1 but lost to Viktor Wild (Russia) by one-hundredth of a second in the quarterfinals, swallowing anger.

He suffered a fractured left wrist early last year and focused on rehabilitation, and was not considered a candidate for a medal despite the approach of the Olympics.

However, he beat Roland Fischnaller of Italy by 0.24 seconds in the final of the men's parallel alpine competition at the 2025-2026 International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup in Rogla, Slovenia, on the 31st of last month.

He won his fourth World Cup title in about a year and 10 months after the Winterberg Games in Germany in March 2024, and just before the opening of the Olympics.

In the first qualifying round, which started on the blue course, he started the race alongside Fischnaller. Some mistakes were made in the slope changes, but he ranked fourth among 16 with a time of 43.21. In the second period, he switched to a red course and raced with Zan Kosir of Slovenia, recording 43.53 seconds to rank sixth.

Kim Sang-gyeom (High1), who participated in the men's division together, recorded a total of 1:27:18 in the first and second periods, joining the round of 16 in eighth place. Fischnaller reached the final with a time of 1:25.13 overall.

Lee Sang-ho is the first to go on a medal hunt on the day. It is all the more meaningful because it is Korea's 400th Olympic medal in both the East and Summer.

Cho Wan-hee (Jeonbuk Ski Association) finished 18th with a time of 1:27.76, and Jeong Hae-rim (High1), the women's team, also finished 31st overall with a total of 1:40.55 after two runs, failing to reach the final round.

<© STARNEWS. All rights reserved. No reproduction or redistribution allowed.>

*This content was translated by AI.