Seo Gun-woo fails to reach men's 80kg final - advances to bronze medal match

 

South Korean taekwondo sensation Seo Gun-woo, 20, failed to advance to the final and is headed to the bronze medal match.

World No. 4 Seo lost his quarterfinal match against world No. 9 Mehran Barghourdari of Iran, 1-2 (4-2, 9-13, 8-12), in the men's 80-kilogram taekwondo event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Monday afternoon (Feb. 9), dropping him to the bronze medal match instead of the final.

Starting in Paris, the sport of taekwondo will have a new rule. Until the last Games in Tokyo, taekwondo consisted of three two-minute rounds, followed by a fourth round of overtime if a winner could not be determined, with the winner being the first to score two points. Points were accumulated in the third round until the overtime period, but this rule changed at the Paris Games.

The rules for the three two-minute rounds are the same, but the points from each round are not cumulative. At the end of each round, the next round will be played to a 0-0 tie, with the winner of the first two out of three rounds winning. Gold points have been removed, and in the event of a tie in each round, skill scoring will be used to favor the athlete who has attempted more difficult skills.

For the first time since the Sydney 2000 Games, the South Korean taekwondo team went "no-gold" in Tokyo three years ago. Park Tae-joon was the first to win gold in the men's 58-kilogram category on Monday morning, as the team looks to redeem itself in Paris. On the morning of the 9th, Kim Yoo-jin won gold in the 파워볼사이트 women's 57kg category.

This time, it was Seo Gun-woo. In the round of 16, he battled Chile's Joaquin Churcil in a close fight, winning 2-1 on points. He almost lost in the second round when the referee declared Churchil the winner, but after a strong protest from his coach Oh Hye-ri, he was able to recover and win in dramatic fashion.

After surviving the crisis, Seo faced Brazil's Enhaki Marques Fernandes in the quarterfinals. They battled 4-4 and 2-2 in the first and second rounds, but the Brazilian won the new round with a higher number of attacks.

Seo made it to the quarterfinals, where he faced Barjordari. Both players explored until the end of the first round, when they exchanged body kicks to tie the score at 2-2 with 31 seconds left in the first round.

Seo took a 4-2 lead with a spinning back kick with 19 seconds left in the first round. From there, he defended the points with skillful game management to take the first round.

With the momentum in his favor, Seo took back-to-back head attacks from Barhordari in the second round, falling to 4-9 with just over a minute left. He tried to fight back with spinning back kicks, but again allowed another decisive head attack, dropping the second round to Barhordari.

A disappointed Seo gave up a body attack with 1:11 left in the third round to fall behind 0-2. He then conceded a head attack to make it 0-5, and back-to-back takedowns made it 8-12. Seo will make his final bid for a medal in the bronze medal match.