Person1970

Hwang Young-cho

Also called: Hero of Montjuïc

South Korean marathon runner who won the marathon at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the first Korean Olympic marathon champion since Sohn Kee-chung 56 years earlier

Born in a seaside village near Samcheok, Gangwon Province, he switched from cycling to running in high school. He won the marathon at the 1991 Sheffield Universiade, and at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he broke away from Japan’s Koichi Morishita on the climb up Montjuïc to win in 2:13:23—on 9 August, exactly 56 years after Sohn Kee-chung’s victory in Berlin. After also winning at the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games he retired in 1996 and became a marathon coach. A monument on Montjuïc in Barcelona commemorates his victory.

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1 related event

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19921992 Barcelona Olympicsparticipant
The first Games after the Cold War held without a boycott, with a unified Germany and a Unified Team of former Soviet republics. Hwang Young-cho won the marathon, the first Korean Olympic marathon victory since Sohn Kee-chung 56 years before.

People who appear alongside

Sohn Kee-chung1912 – 2002
Korean marathon runner under Japanese rule who won the 1936 Berlin Olympic marathon for Japan but bowed his head on the podium; the photograph led to the Japanese flag erasure incident

Themes this person appears in

Summer Olympics776 BC – 2024
From the ancient festival at Olympia to Paris 2024 — how the modern Games revived by Coubertin came through wars, boycotts and division