In the summer of 2010, Won Yun-jong, a university graduate thinking of applying for a job as a gym teacher, saw a notice saying that the national bobsleigh team was looking for applicants.

That same year, Seo Young-woo, a former sprinter who was enjoying his first summer break at university, took some bobsleigh classes with his friends.

By 2016, more than five years after that summer, the two have become the first Korean and the first Asian gold medalists at a bobsled world cup.

Won and Seo, the Korean national bobsleigh pair, took first place on Jan. 23 in the fifth race at the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation World Cup 2015/ 2016 held in Whistler, Canada. The record was 1 minute, 43.41 seconds, the total sum of the first and second runs. The two are now the first Korean and first Asian pair to take first place at a bobsleigh world cup.

The former sprinter and would-be school teacher's challenge sounds a lot like the movie "Cool Runnings" (1993). Just like the Jamaican team's challenge at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, the Korean pair also had to learn how to sled through trial and error, facing and overcoming poor facilities and bad conditions. At their first international race at the North America's Cup in 2010, they couldn't even finish their race because their sleigh flipped over. Due to the high price of bobsleigh sleds -- easily in the hundreds of millions of Korean won -- they had to recycle used sleds sold off by some European teams.



The win this time was particularly special, as they recently lost their head coach, the late Malcom Gomer Lloyd. He had led the Korean national bobsleigh team since the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and is broadly responsible for improving the national team's performance. He passed away on Jan. 4 without telling his team that he had cancer.

The widow of the late coach visited the Whistler track to give the team a special gift. It was a medal that she made, and on it was the message, "Go for PyeongChang, go for gold."



The pair also put a picture of their former coach and the letter "G," after the coach's middle name Gomer, on their sled and their helmets, mourning him throughout the race. "Thank you, Gomer," said Won in an interview after winning the race. He sent his appreciations to his former coach and held up the medal he received from the coach's widow.

Won and Seo have now taken third place at the first, second and fourth IBSF World Cups this season, and came in sixth at the third World Cup. Though ranking ninth at the sixth World Cup on Jan. 24, the pair took the top spot in the rankings, with 1,153 points.

By Chang Iou-chung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Yonhap News
icchang@korea.kr