Olympic History: gold medallist Dae-Nam Song coach in Korea

Today is the birthday of Dae-Nam Song of Korea. They say that the Olympics is where dreams are made. In 2012 South Korea’s Dae-Nam Song, was 33-years-old and with no major victory in over three years, was not among the players expected to win a medal at the 2012 London Olympics. Yet, he ended up getting the gold.

Song was for many years a U81kg fighter. In fact, when he won gold at the 2009 Paris Grand Slam, his best accomplishment prior to the Olympics, it was in the U81kg division.

Domestically, he had a major rival in the form of Kim Jae-bum, whom he could not overcome. In a bid to make it to the Olympics, he moved up a weight to U90kg.

Song did not have a lot of success at this new weight. His best results at U90kg, prior to the London Games, was bronze at the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and silver at the 2012 Dusseldorf Grand Prix. However, in Dusseldorf, he had beaten his compatriot Kyu-Won Lee in the semifinal, and thus was chosen for the Olympics.

Going into London, Song was not in the Top 10 of the world ranking (he was ranked 17). Nobody expected anything much from him but he shocked the world by defeating many top fighters on the way to the final.

He defeated future World Champion Elkhan Mammadov of Azerbaijan in the preliminary rounds, Japan’s Masashi Nishiyama in the quarterfinal, and former World Champion Tiago Camilo of Brazil in the semifinal. So, it was not an easy ride.

His final was against future World Champion Asley Gonzalez of Cuba. With both players being drop seoi-nage specialists, neither could get that throw to work against the other. Song then switch tact and used ko-uchi-makikomi – a classic complementary technique to seoi-nage – to knock Gonzalez down and win the gold medal.

Today, Song is a successful national coach in South Korea.