Overconfidence is always bad. A glaring example of this fact happened in the recent day’s men’s 3,000m relay final of the ongoing 19th Asian Games. South Korean rollerskater Jung Cheol Won underwent a sportsman’s nightmare as he hailed his win untimely. This certainly cost him as well as his country a costly gold medal at the Asian Games in China. The big loss remained so pesky for the South Korean athlete that it became practically unimaginable to make known what excuse he could stand to give within a marked track.
He reportedly committed a grave mistake of judgment. Presuming he had comfortably outpaced his competitor, Huang Yu-lin of Taiwan, Jung reduced his impetus and put up his arms in casual celebration. However, to his utter astonishment, Huang Yu-lin pounced across the finish line first, gaining a victory by a mere one-hundredth of a second with a time of 4 minutes and 05.692 seconds.
He was about to touch the finish line with his all-out efforts of triumph in the layers of his calculated pace and gait but he was unlucky on the ground where suspense got a tad bit more painfully sour. It was not something Jung tried out in the middle of October, but it might not be a response to the slow withdrawal between the summer heat and the cooler temperate weather. Perhaps it was not nippy in the running arena.
In a moment of reflection, Jung admitted his expensive mistake. He was reportedly listened to saying, “I made rather a major mistake. I did not come at full speed to the finish line. I let my guard down too early. I am very sorry. I apologize to my teammates and to our fans who supported us. We all worked very hard together for this, and it’s all my fault.”
Taiwanese athlete Huang considered his win a kind of “miracle” and credited his coach for infusing in him the principle of never giving up. He disclosed his thoughts during the race, saying, “I realised they were celebrating, I was still fighting. I wasn’t sure whether I had reached the finish line in time. I thought it was such a shame that I was just a little bit short, and then the results came up on the screen showing that I had won by one-hundredth of a second, and it was just a miracle.”