Loss After Loss in Rio: Zero Medals for SK in Volleyball and Football
South Korean teams for football and volleyball will go back to their country without any medals, ending their Rio Olympics bid on a bad note.
Korea JoongAng Daily reported that the South Korean women's volleyball team was eliminated in the quarterfinals during the 12th day of the ongoing Olympics. The Koreans played against the 11th-ranked Netherlands at Maracanazinho and was defeated 3-1 (19-25, 14-25, 25-23, 20-25). The loss ended the country's bid to reach the Olympic podium for the first time since the 1976 Montreal Games where the country won the bronze medal.
During the qualifiers for the Olympics in May, the Netherlands seemed to have no match against the Koreans, losing 3-0. But this time, the Netherlands had a perfect revenge against athlete Kim Yeon Koung and the rest of the SK team after ousting them from the volleyball semifinals.
It seemed that Lady Luck was not on the Koreans' side during the game. In the first set, the team's reception success rate was only 28 percent, and it also gave out three straight service aces during the second set. They also could not do any damage with Kim's spikes because of the tight defense of the European team.
Kim, who is also the highest-paid volleyball player in the world had a total of 27 points, the most points scored by a single player in that particular match. She said, "Some cried after the game. For some of us, it is the last Olympics of our careers."
Meanwhile, the men's football team also ended their Rio Olympics bid for gold when they lost to Honduras in their quarterfinals game. The South Korean team clinched the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics, but it failed to surpass such feat after bowing out from the medal their loss.
The SK women's field hockey team was also unable to advance to the quarterfinals after it ranked at the bottom of its group. Greco-Roman wrestler Ryu Han Su was defeated by Rasul Chunayev of Azerbaijan in the battle for bronze.
