Short-track skater is youngest on U.S. team
Simon Cho awoke somewhere in eastern Wisconsin, disoriented and groggy, and for a split-second wondered if it was all a dream.
As his father, Jay, piloted their car into a small-town gas station, it finally struck the 18-year-old short-track speed skater that he really was heading to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Cho had clinched his unexpected berth hours before at the United States Olympic Trials in Marquette, Mich. But in the tumult after the race there had been media commitments and drug testing and then, finally, an awards dinner. It was 1 a.m. before Cho and his father began the seven-hour drive back to the airport in Chicago for their flight home. It was 6 a.m. before an exhausted Cho woke up — though he still doesn’t know where he was.
“I just looked around and thought, ‘Oh, my God, I did it,’ Cho said. “That’s when it really, really hit me that it happened and that I was going to Vancouver.”
Cho, who was born in South Korea and grew up in Laurel, Md., was on skates by age three and started training seriously at clubs in Montgomery County and Arlington County by age nine. At 12 he was a clear prodigy after winning national titles in his age group. But it was a long road from there to an Olympic spot — one Cho almost didn’t navigate.
As a freshman in high school, he spent a year in Marquette training at the United States Olympic Education Center. He moved back to Laurel the next year, but dropped out of public school when he missed too much time because of speed skating. At 17 Cho moved — on his own — to Salt Lake City and became a junior member of the men’s national team. But a poor 2008 season left Cho frustrated. A once-promising career had derailed and so he again went back to Maryland to live with his family and re-connect with old friends.
“I just felt like I needed a break,” Cho said. “They bought me a plane ticket home and I got a chance to reflect on life and take my mind off the stress of training all the time.”
But Jay Cho didn’t think his son wasn’t finished with skating. Last April — after urging from Jimmy Jang, Simon’s former club coach and a national team assistant — Jay Cho convinced his son to go back to Salt Lake City. It would be embarrassing to face the national team members he’d walked out on. But Simon still had four months to get ready for the Olympic trials in Marquette. There was time.
“My dad just didn’t want me to have any regrets,” Cho said.
So he trained all summer with the national team and by the time of the trials in mid-September, he felt ready. After a solid start in the 1,500-meter race, Cho shocked everyone by beating Olympic star Apolo Ohno and established veterans J.R. Celski and Jeff Simon in the 500. That earned him a spot in Vancouver. He also will take part in the 5,000-meter relay. Funding, long an issue for Cho, is stable now that he’s made the five-man Olympic team. Previously, his parents sold their small seafood restaurant in Prince George’s County last fall and moved to Salt Lake City to help offset the cost of training.
“I definitely feel like my family has sacrificed even more than I have,” Cho said. “I’m expected to make sacrifices because it’s my skating and my career. But for my family to do the same thing? That’s priceless.”
