Paris Olympics Taekwondo Test Event, Opening on September 1st
Paris Olympics Taekwondo Test Event, Opening on September 1st... Jangjun Sortie
The Paris 2023 World Taekwondo (WT) Grand Prix, a taekwondo test event for the 2024 Paris Olympics, will be held from the 1st (Korean time) to the 3rd of next month.
WT said on the 28th, "255 players from 59 countries, including Korea, are scheduled to compete in Levallois-Perret near Paris."
Korea is planning to send a large number of key players for the national team, including male 58kg Jun Jang (Korea Gas Corporation) and Park Tae-jun (Kyunghee University), male 80kg weight Park Woo-hyuk (Samsung S1), and female 67kg overweight Lee Da-bin (Seoul City Hall).
Through this competition, the national team plans to learn the local atmosphere of Paris and also conduct a final inspection of the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, which will open next month.
Russian and Belarusian players who were punished for the invasion of Ukraine at the Paris Grand Prix will also participate.
The WT said, "Russia, Belarus, and refugee team players will compete as individual qualification (AIN) players." "Maxim Haramtsov, the winner of the men"s 80kg class at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and Vladislav Larin (above Russia) in the men"s 80kg class also applied. "he said.
The two players tried to return to the international competition through the Baku World Taekwondo Championships held in June, but were banned from participating by the WT Qualifications Committee, so they could not achieve their intentions.
At the time, the committee banned players who had ties to the Russian and Belarusian military and intelligence agencies, declared support for the war in Ukraine, and players who did not meet World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) standards.
Haramtsov and Larin failed to meet the criteria and were given a three-month grace period until August 31 of this year.
WT explained, "The two players were allowed to participate individually in the Paris Grand Prix because no new evidence was found to violate the participation conditions during the grace period."
Meanwhile, the Paris Olympic Taekwondo will be held at the Grand Palais, a monumental building on the Champs Elysees in Paris, from August 7 to 10 next year.