The post-Olympic show will continue

The Olympics are over now, and citizens are going back to their jobs. But the athletes’ post-Olympic show will continue four years from now.

KANG HYE-RANThe author is a senior reporter on culture at the JoongAng Ilbo. Once the 2024 Paris Olympics ended after 17 days of fierce competition, television channels and YouTube are engaged in the “post-Olympic” entertainment competition. You Quiz on the Block, which features the hottest stars, invited Oh Sang-uk, the first Asian fencer to win two Olympic gold medals.

Upon returning home, Oh is getting celebrity treatment, and when Yoo Jae-suk, the host of the variety show, thanked him for appearing on the show despite his busy schedule, Oh half-jokingly said, “I should make as many appearances as possible now, because I wouldn’t be invited at other times.” He’s not wrong. After the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he was one of the Korean “Fencing Avengers,” but he had been forgotten for years. I enjoyed watching old appearances of our Olympic stars, including Oh.

The thought that athletes must only focus on sports instead of appearing on television is outdated. Some athletes seek a new career on television. Known for his unique sense of humor, Gu Bon-gil, another fencing star, openly said he would like to pursue a career in entertainment upon retiring. Kang Ho-dong, a former ssireum (Korean traditional wrestling) athlete, and Seo Jang-hoon, a former basketball player, successfully changed their career paths. They can be the new sport stars’ role models.

In fact, the ways that athletes can continue their fame after retirement is quite limited in Korea. It’s not an easy job for athletes in professional leagues — and even harder for the athletes in events that are only in the spotlight every four years during the Olympic Games.

Frankly, the competition in the Games and the documentaries and interviews before and after the sporting festival could be a part of the “entertainment show” for viewers. Of course, no athlete dreaming of an Olympic medal is training “for fun.” The passion and effort of the athletes are too precious to be evaluated every four years.

But it’s also true that the elite athletes in unpopular sports can only get public attention with the Olympics and national competitions. The athletes’ desire to enjoy the Olympic boom, combined with the media seeking to milk them every four years, brought the latest Olympic-related entertainment fad.

As this trend has become a genre, more detailed storytelling is taking place. Short track skater Kwak Yoon-ki’s YouTube channel has 980,000 subscribers. He uses his personal network to have interviews with Olympic athletes even before reporters do. I watched an episode where Kwak went to cheer for Oh Sang-uk, the Olympic fencing gold medalist, in a national competition in Korea.

In the video, Kwak showed a stadium with few spectators and a shabby waiting room, adding that he thought that only winter sports got such little attention in Korea. The athletes are engaging in fights against themselves for a short moment of glory. The Olympics are over now, and citizens are going back to their jobs. But the athletes’ post-Olympic show will continue four years from now.