Winnipegger Park quickly becoming the face of taekwondo

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This article was published 28/11/2024 (296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Life is returning to normal for Skylar Park, Manitoba’s lone medallist from the recent Summer Olympics in Paris.

Normal, that is, if you’re not counting promotional events for Hollywood movie premieres or a spike in public speaking engagements for the 25-year-old Winnipegger.

Park, who won a bronze medal in the women’s 57-kilogram taekwondo division in Paris, is back training four hours daily five or six times per week at Tae Ryong Park Academy as part of her long-range plans to win gold at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“I was chasing success at the Olympics for me and for my country and my family and was hoping to stand on the podium for Canada,” said Park recently. “I think all these things could come or they couldn’t come but your day-to-day life doesn’t change.

“I woke up the day after coming home from the Olympics, and I’m back at the academy, sweeping the floors, working, doing all the regular things. So life is different in a sense, and I’ve been grateful with opportunities that I have been taking advantage of and enjoying but the day-to-day life is still exactly the same as before.”

Earlier this month, Park made a glitzy appearance in Toronto with Canadian hockey superstar Natalie Spooner on behalf of the new movie release, Wicked. There are also speaking engagements such as a recent conference appearance with Paralympic triathlon bronze medallist Leanne Taylor of Oak Bluff.

Park seems to be perfectly at ease with her role as spokesperson.

“The coolest thing coming back from the Games is just chatting with people, whether it be at events or even just on the street or at the grocery store and people just congratulating me, which is awesome,” said Park, a gold medallist at the 2023 Pan Am Games.

“Everyone has a little story of where they were watching. Someone was telling me they were watching in a cab or someone on the way to the airport or someone was watching while they were travelling with their family.”

In the interest of a full-time return to training in September and increased business opportunities since Paris, Park has put her academic life on pause. She had been a student at the University of Manitoba’s Asper Business School and plans to return one day.

“I am an athlete full time and so I do love the business side of sport,” she said, noting increased enthusiasm from visitors to TRP Academy as potential newcomers to the sport. “It’s something that obviously I’ve been interested in and dabbling in. I enjoy speaking and doing promos for new movies that I’m excited about. So it’s been fun.”

Park’s ongoing competitive career is music to the ears of Taekwondo Canada executive director Dave Harris, who is anticipating a five to 10 per cent uptick in young athlete registrations nationally, a development he credits directly to Park’s Olympic exploits.

“We’re going to see uptake because of Skylar’s medal and I think we’re particularly going to see uptake from female participants,” said Harris. “You’re going to see families take either take their young children or young children are going to ask them to participate in the sport of taekwondo because of what she’s accomplished, because she is so visible in the Canadian community.”

The official participant numbers won’t come in until the end of 2024 but Harris is getting encouraging feedback from administrators holding colour belt tournaments in Canada, which are events for athletes who haven’t reached black-belt status.

“It’s also interesting that with Taekwondo Canada our biggest success stories have been female athletes,” said Harris. “So you see the families bringing little girls to the taekwondo clubs and you see it’s paying off, because you are seeing the success stories with the sport.”

Harris said there are approximately 25,000 taekwondo participants registered nationally, with a 52-48 per cent male-female breakdown.

“We’re extremely proud of the entire Park family because of what they’ve done — Skyler in particular, obviously — but we just see this as a springboard to better things moving forward,” said Harris. “Not just better, but bigger things as well…

“She’s so articulate and she says the right things because she believes in them.”

The 2028 Games may be 3 1/2 years away but there are crucial decisions to be made to prepare Skylar and her younger brothers, Tae-Ku and Braven, for the next Olympic qualifying cycle.

The sport is going through a seismic shift in procedure, with qualifying points prior to June 2024 now wiped from athlete’s resumes. However, Skylar’s Olympic results do count towards qualifying for Los Angeles and the next major competitive events are the Canadian championships in February followed by the Canada Open in Montreal.

“We had a meeting with my team a few weeks ago just to kind of debrief the Games and talk about our plans,” said Park. “Sport is an interesting thing. It never stops. As soon as the Olympics are done, the new qualification for the next Olympics starts.

“Every sport is quite different, but that’s how it works in taekwondo, and so we’re already planning for how I’m going to qualify for the L.A. Olympics and hopefully, how my brothers will qualify as well. All three of us are very much aiming to qualify for those Games.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca