'Most medals ever → Olympic retirement' Choi Min-jeong still exploding in class... 1st place in the 500m selection contest for the national team

*This content was translated by AI.

Choi Min-jeong (28, Seongnam City Hall), a living legend of Korean short track, showed her unchanged skills even after saying goodbye to the Olympic stage. He showed off his overwhelming skills in the competition for the next season's national flag and rose to the lead.

Choi Min-jeong was the first to cross the finish line with a time of 43.787 seconds in the women's 500m final on the second day of the first national short track competition between 2026 and 2027 at Mokdong Ice Rink in Seoul on the 8th. Shim Suk-hee (Seoul City Hall, 43.850) came in second, and Kim Eun-seo (Hwaseong City Hall, 43.953) came in third.

Choi Min-jeong, who was assigned the second lane of the final, beat Shim Suk-hee to take the lead at the start. Since then, he has proved his robustness with a perfect race operation that does not allow a turnaround. Choi Min-jeong, who won the 500m top after finishing third in 1,500m the previous day, secured a total of 47 points in the women's overall ranking.

Choi Min-jeong added one gold medal (race) and one silver medal (1500m) at the 2026 Milan-Cortina D'Ampezzo Winter Olympics in February, harvesting a total of seven medals (gold 4, silver 3). This is the highest medal record by a Korean in the history of the Winter Olympics.

In the men's division, Kim Tae-sung (Hwaseong City Hall) is scary. Kim ranked first with a time of 41.606 seconds in the men's 500-meter final, winning two gold medals following his 1,500-meter victory the previous day

The first round of the competition will be finished on the 9th with the men's and women's 1,000m race. The top 24 players in the first tournament will qualify for the second round of selection, which will be held from the 11th. By summing up the results of the first and second tournaments, the men's and women's 7th place will be eligible for the national team for the next season.

Except for Kim Ki-li (Seongnam City Hall) and Lim Jong-eon (Goyang City Hall), who have already been automatically selected for the World Championship, players who are ranked first and second in the final round of the tournament will first qualify for the individual competition in the next season.

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*This content was translated by AI.