It really happened around me. The people who set the wedding date on August 15th (Saturday) and those who set the wedding date on August 22nd (Saturday) a week later have a big difference. The wedding on the 15th was grandly held with the blessing of hundreds of guests, but the wedding on the 22nd was rather sloppy and the conflict over the penalty fee with the wedding company made the bride and groom and their families suffer severely.

A similar thing happened in Korean sports. The Korean Gymnastics Association is in an emergency situation. This is because the domestic competition has never been held until now, with less than a month left to accept the university application form.

In the beginning, the Gymnastics Association planned to hold only the high school competition for the national gymnastics competition from the 21st to the 24th in the Taereung Athlete's Village for high school athletes to enter college. This was taken in consideration of the reality that it is impossible to go on to a sports specialist without a record of the national competition.

However, unfortunately, from the 19th, two days before the competition, the social distancing caused by Corona 19 was elevated to stage 2 across the metropolitan area, and everything went into vain. This is because if you are upgraded to Level 2, more than 50 people cannot gather indoors. The Korean Gymnastics Association decided that no matter how much we squeezed our hair, we could not compete with 50 or fewer people, so we canceled it.

Seo-jeong Yeo (Gyeonggi Gymnasium), currently a senior in high school, was scheduled to participate in this competition. Yeo Seo-jeong, a gold medalist at the Asian Games in Jakarta in 2018, is expected to have no major difficulties in going to university due to her achievements in domestic competitions such as international and national sports competitions.

But the problem is other players. If the competition is not held due to Corona 19 by September 23, when the application for admission begins, the third-year high school players will not have any performance this year. Each university may decide whether to pass or not based on his 2019 grades, but if a player who did not achieve such grades last year due to injuries and sluggishness, etc., there is virtually no way to go to university and the situation is dark.

The Korean Gymnastics Association, who had a fire on his instep, even considered a plan for the referees to visit high school athletes all over the country and hold the competition. In other words, if the competition is held in Seoul, Busan, Gwangju and other cities and provinces nationwide, it is possible to have fewer than 50 people. However, in this case, not only the gymnastics arena but also the gymnastic equipment may be different, which inevitably leads to controversy about the fairness of scoring. So it was not adopted.

In contrast to the Korean Gymnastics Association, the Korean Boxing Association was lucky. The Boxing Association held a nationwide high school boxing match in Cheongyang, Chungcheongnam-do from the 18th to the 23rd, three days earlier than the Gymnastics Association. Like gymnastics, it was the first event held late this year because it was not possible to compete with Corona 19.

Unlike gymnastics, boxing was able to hold competitions because the venue was not located in the metropolitan area, so the second stage of social distancing was not applied from the 18th to the 22nd, the first day of the competition. The second stage of social distancing across the country began on the 23rd, the last day of the competition. The Boxing Association held a competition with less than 50 people on this day.

According to an official from the Korea Boxing Association, "We made sure that there are no more than 50 players, including players, coaches, and referees, such as players waiting outdoors and entering the stadium only when their game starts. Of course, the competition was barely finished by running without spectators." I let out a sigh of relief.

An official of the Korean Sports Association said, "There are sports organizations that held the competition when Corona 19 was somewhat deteriorated, and some organizations, like
gymnastics, unfortunately canceled the competition for a few days. But the social distancing step 2 will be raised just before the competition. How could the Gymnastics Association know in advance?” he expressed regret.

The Korean Gymnastics Association is hoping that the Ministry of Education and the university authorities will take special measures to reflect the results of the competition held in October or November after the application is completed, but the admission schedule is unlikely to be easy. Eventually, we have no choice but to wait for the miracle that the number of corona 19 confirmed patients will rapidly decrease sooner or later.

(Photo = Yonhap News)