'Weightlifting fairy' Park Hye-jung, 21, has won an Olympic silver medal with her mother, who passed away in heaven. Park Hye-jung won the women's heavyweight (over 81 kilograms) weightlifting competition at the Paris Olympics on Nov. 11 with a lift of 131 kilograms and a snatch of 168 kilograms for a total of 299 kilograms. It was a new South Korean record, beating her previous mark of 296 kilograms by three kilograms.

However, it was not enough to overtake Li Wenyuan (24-China - 309kg total), who is considered the world's strongest in this event. Li celebrated her second consecutive Olympic title by lifting a coach instead of a barbell in the final third of the dragon phase. Li Wenyuan holds the world record in this event (335 kilograms).

"I tried not to think about my mom," said Park, who lost her mother in April, "but when I came to the Olympics, I started thinking about her during the warm-up. Even today, I thought about my mom the most while playing," she said with tears in her eyes. "I relied a lot on my dad and my sister to get me here, and they're in the stadium right now, and I can't wait to show them my medal. I'll show it to my mom when I get back to Korea," she said, adding, "I want to go eat snails with my dad and sister before I get on the plane tomorrow."

The women's heavyweight category is where Vice Minister of Culture and Sports Jang Jang-ran, 41, won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Zhang won silver behind Chinese athlete Tang Gung-hong (45) at her 해외 카지노 사이트 first Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, before changing the color of her medal to gold four years later. Park Hye-jung, too, has been training with the goal of winning a medal in her first Olympics, and then going for gold in Los Angeles in 2028. "I saw that Lee Won-won had lost a lot of form. I think I'll be able to compete with her in LA, and I think I'll be a better player if I grow a little more," Park said.

Park's silver medal makes her the first South Korean Olympic weightlifting medalist in eight years, since Yoon Jin-hee, 38, won bronze in the women's 53-kilogram category in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. No South Korean male athlete has won an Olympic medal in that time. "I think the nickname 'weightlifting fairy' belongs to me now, and I will do my best in every competition responsibly," Park said.

Seong Seung-min, 21, won bronze in the women's individual final of the modern pentathlon at the Palace of Versailles. She became the first Asian, let alone a South Korean, to reach the podium in the women's modern pentathlon at the Olympics. She competed with her hair dyed gold and vowed to "dye my medal gold in four years."