It’s been a long day for Skylar Park, en route to an Olympic bronze medal in taekwondo—but she’s had her family with her all the way.
The 25-year-old won Canada’s first Olympic taekwondo medal in 16 years on Thursday, claiming bronze in the women’s 57kg event. Right alongside her was her father Jae Park, who is also her coach.
“It’s an honour,” said Skylar, of winning bronze. “I was just telling my dad and my team, I don’t think it’s fully sunken in yet.
“But when that final buzzer went off, it was just pure joy and gratitude for what we’ve been through as a team and my family.”
Her family has been through plenty in the sport of taekwondo. There are 16 black belts in her extended family, including her brothers Tae-Ku Park and Braven Park, who competed with Skylar at last year’s Pan American Games. Tae-Ku had an official support role in Paris as his sister’s training partner.
READ: Momentum: Skylar Park finds her independence within her family’s taekwondo legacy
That family legacy, and her own Olympic experience at Tokyo 2020, had Park coming into Paris 2024 with the goal of winning a gold medal. But competing at the Grand Palais on Day 13 was unlike anything she’d been through before.
“First of all, stepping into this arena, it’s beautiful, it’s big and there’s a huge crowd, something that we’re not always super used to in taekwondo,” she said. “So I think it took my breath away a little bit when I first stepped out there, and I just had to shake off the nerves, but we were able to get through that first match.”
Despite a self-described “rocky start”, Park moved through the Round of 16 with a 2-0 (6-2, 4-3) win over Czechia’s Dominika Hronova. She felt good moving into the quarterfinals against South Korea’s Kim Yujin, with her father telling her before the match: “win as a team, lose as a team”.
That wisdom loomed large as Park would be upset by a score of 2-0 (7-6, 9-5) in the quarterfinal, dashing her gold-medal dreams. All was not lost, however; if the Korean athlete won her semifinal match, Park would get a potential shot at bronze through the repechage.
“I reconnected with my family in the stands and then I just kind of sat there, in my mom’s arms the whole time as we watched that semifinal go down,” said Park. “Gratefully, Korea won and so I was able to get back in the repechage.”
READ: Park family ready to compete in the ‘motherland’ at Santiago 2023
Once that was confirmed, Park was “full focus” on earning that bronze medal.
In the repechage, she defeated Hatice Kubra Ilgun of Turkey 2-0 (6-4, 3-2). Then, in the bronze-medal match, Park won 2-0 (0-0, 4-2) over Laeticis Aoun of Lebanon.
“It’s been a long day,” said Park, of the four matches that sent her from awe to doubt to disappointment to elation.
And though she finished the day on a wonderful high, she also remembers what her dad told her at the day’s low point, after her unexpected quarterfinal loss:
“Just that he was proud of me.”
