In 2023, the men’s water polo team will start earnestly quenching in Hungary, where water polo is the national flag, with the goal of winning an Asian Games medal in 33 years.
The Korea Swimming Federation announced on the 18th that 16 members of the men’s national water polo team left for Hungary for three weeks of overseas training.
The 2023 national team, led by leaders Jin Man-geun and Kim Ki-woo and composed of captain Dae-yong Kwon (28, Gyeonggi Provincial Office) and 13 others, will start joint training with professional teams in the Hungarian water polo league based in Hungary’s Tutterbanya and Cegled. Afterwards, he plans to return to Korea on March 14 after completing a three-week schedule from Gödelle to special training with the leader of the Hungarian under-18 national team.
The federation said, “The Chegled VSE team is a team that ranked 4th in the Hungarian water polo league in the 2022-2023 season. We expect to experience various game strategies and tactics, such as attack and defense patterns that cannot be encountered in Korea.” 스포츠토토
Kwon Dae-yong, who played an active part in the 2018 Jakarta/Palembang Asian Games and the 2019 Gwangju World Aquatics Championships and became the captain in the 8th year of the national team, said, “It is the first opportunity for battery training to focus entirely on training, not participating in international competitions. Therefore, I expect to learn a lot tactically and gain a lot of experience through several practice games, while improving the overall team’s ability to score goals.”
Chairman Chung Chang-hoon, who personally sent the national team off at the airport, encouraged the team by saying, “Due to the nature of the sport, water polo skills will inevitably improve as experience accumulates, so we will spare no support to provide more opportunities for overseas training in the future.”
The national team’s goal this year is to reach the podium at the Asian Games in Hangzhou for the first time in 33 years. The best performance of Korean water polo in the Asian Games was the silver medal won at the 1986 Seoul Games. Since then, he has not been on the podium for 33 years since his bronze medal at the 1990 Beijing Games. The 1988 Seoul Olympics and the 2019 Gwangju World Aquatics Championships were the first and last to participate in the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships as a host country.