Taekwondo

Gymnastics was too rough for young Nia Abdallah. After Abdallah had an up-close-and-too-personal vault one day -- "I got hurt; I busted my lip," she says -- she turned to a much quieter, sedate sport. Taekwondo. A joke, of course. Even Abdallah realized that didn't quite make sense when she was telling reporters about her sporting career reversal. But everything seemed a little upside down at the Sports Pavilion at the Faliro Sports Complex when the 20-year-old Abdallah upset the status quo.

There's no mistaking the Lopez family's garage in Sugar Land, Texas. It's the one with holes in the walls, courtesy of four taekwondo-loving kids and their friends. Dodging the laundry their mother would hang to dry in the heat and humidity, Jean, Steven, Mark and Diana Lopez channeled their sibling rivalry and athletic talents into acquiring world-class taekwondo skills.

He first lunged at me with a whoosh of a front kick, aimed at my head. At least I could see his bare foot coming and pulled back in an un-artful half-limbo sort of way. But, in the Studio City martial arts class, I couldn't anticipate or defend myself against the spinning kicks and jabs that followed. Good thing my 230-pound sparring partner, who's more than twice my size, stopped just short of making contact.

Choi Hong-hi, the Korean general who developed the martial art of taekwondo more than 50 years ago and watched it attain worldwide popularity, has died. He was 83. Choi, who became a Canadian citizen in 1977, was a longtime resident of the province of Ontario. He returned to the Korean peninsula weeks before his death from stomach cancer in Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 15.

The head of the U.S. Olympic Committee when the Salt Lake City scandal broke is about to become vice president of an international sports group led by a powerful South Korean implicated in the case. Former USOC president Bill Hybl has been offered the vice presidency of the International Taekwondo Federation, a source with knowledge of the offer said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. In addition, Hybl was instrumental in helping his hometown of Colorado Springs, Colo.

This is a story about what it's like to do the right thing. Last weekend, 20-year-old Esther Kim gave up a spot on the U.S. taekwondo team that will compete at the Olympic Games in Sydney so that her injured friend, 18-year-old Kay Poe, could go. Kim forfeited a sure win at the U.S. trials and said, "I never thought about not doing it."

The story that appeared on May 6 regarding the marketing of the World Taekwondo Federation equipment did not include the following facts, which entirely alter the thrust of the article: 1. Century Martial Art Supply, correctly identified as a company without rights to market WTF equipment, negotiated with our federation for those rights but ultimately refused to pay the same price that eight sanctioned competitors, worldwide, agreed to pay. ...

A powerful Olympic official from South Korea, reprimanded in the Salt Lake City bribery scandal, has been linked to a newly disclosed equipment deal that has already come under scrutiny by the U.S. Olympic Committee. The official is Kim Un Yong, the highest-ranking International Olympic Committee member implicated in the Salt Lake City bidding scandal. Kim is head of the World Taekwondo Federation, a martial arts association.

In what was believed to be the first fatality in an official U.S. taekwondo tournament, a budding 25-year-old Danish rock star collapsed and died after being kicked in the head by his opponent during a match Saturday evening at the Anaheim Convention Center. Michael Richard Strube of Aalborg, Denmark, was lead singer for a popular Danish dance band, Point, and also had a successful career as a model, appearing in TV commercials and magazines, according to news organizations in Copenhagen.

In what was believed to be the first fatality in an official U.S. taekwondo tournament, a budding 25-year-old Danish rock star collapsed and died after being kicked in the head by his opponent during a match Saturday evening at the Anaheim Convention Center.