SYDNEY – Here is a different Olympic ring. One not interlocked with four others and also – too often – interlocked with jingoism, cronyism and corruption.
This is a ring in Colorado Springs with two childhood friends staring across from opposing corners, their secret still only known to them. This is a ring where a scheduled fight is not going to occur, forcing us to rethink how we determine winners in this society. This is a ring in which the Olympic spirit, a fleeting emotion too readily given away to the highest bidder to pre-package, is going to flower.
In this ring on May 20, Esther Kim bowed out of the U.S. Olympic Taekwondo Team final to allow her injured “sister” Kay Poe to go to Sydney. Kim does this because she believes in fair play and friendship, and because she believes in the teachings of her father, who coaches both her and Poe.
“I tell my students [to] compete [at] your best, but be recognized as a champion for your life,” said Jin Won Kim.
His daughter reigns as the non-competing champion of these Games; as corny as it sounds, a gold medalist in the game of life.
“The night before the competition I was worried that the girls would be fighting and so I called my school in Texas and asked all the students to pray,” Jin Won Kim said. “God provided an answer. We made two champions, one for competition and one for life.”
They are an odd-looking couple. Poe, 18, is 5-1, 100 pounds with close-cropped red hair. If you passed her on the street, no way would you know she is the world’s top-ranked flyweight. She looks ready for home room, not to kick butt. Esther, the daughter of Korean immigrants, is three inches taller and two years older with long black hair and the public poise of a runway model.
They had met at a 1989 Halloween party in Jin Won Kim’s Taekwondo school in Houston. Poe had put her hand in that of a stranger that turned out to be Esther, and the two have been holding to each other ever since. “Sisters” is the word they kept coming back to.
The two had never fought in the ring because they competed in different weight classes. But Taekwondo is a first-time Olympic sport, and it is an open competition without weight class. Poe actually had won the tournament in July 1999 to get America into the Olympics, but still had to emerge from a five-woman round-robin at the U.S. Trials last May to get there herself. She won a 0-0 referee’s decision in an initial bout against Kim. But, shockingly, Kim worked her way to the final.
In her last match before the final, against Mandy Meloon, Poe dislocated her left kneecap. By rule she had one minute to rise before disqualification. Kim, watching from the crowd, screamed, “Kay, you must get up.” Poe did after 50 seconds, and somehow finished the fight, winning 4-4 on a referee’s decision. That set up a Kim-Poe final.
To get to the holding area downstairs at the Colorado Spring facility, Poe had to ride Jin Won Kim’s back. He laid Poe next to his daughter. They had their dream, to get to the final and assure one would make the Olympics. But Kim saw Poe’s swollen knee. She knew her friend would try to fight, but that it would be useless.
“To fight my sister like that would be completely unfair,” Esther said. She decided Poe had trained harder, wanted this chance more and that she did not want to go to the Olympics at her pal’s expense. She told Poe she was bowing out. The two argued briefly. But Kim prevailed by saying, “I’ll have no regrets in 10 years. I’ll look back and be proud. It is the right thing to do.” They fell into each other’s arms crying.
Then came the tough part, Kim having to inform her father. She asked to be heard full out and told him, “today Kay will have a gold medal around her neck, but I’ll have one around my heart.”
Both her father and Poe’s father asked Esther to reconsider. But she was adamant. Bracing Poe between them, Esther and her father went up the stairs to the ring, where the announcement was made to a stunned crowd.
“It’s not like I’d thrown my dream away, I gave it over to Kate,” Esther said. “To have two dreams in one small body is going to make it stronger. I didn’t win. But for the first time in my life, I felt like a champion.”
In the week after the event, Esther was awoken by a call from Juan Antonio Samaranch. The IOC president had been so moved by this story that he invited Esther and her father to the Olympics as his guest. Kim and Poe also have done a series of national TV shows and four movie studios have made contact for the story rights.
It is a story that will only improve if Poe could win a medal Sept. 27 with Esther in the crowd. Together with her friend at the Olympics, Esther says she has not had a second thought about her sacrifice.
“I feel I am seeing the fruit of my work, not only from my best student, but my daughter,” Jin Won Kim said. “I told Kay, ‘do the best you can, you will have Esther’s soul and heart inside you.’ I told Esther that she is not going to the Olympics as a competitor, but she is going as a champion for life.”
