South Korea's national speed skating representative Cha Min-kyu has the best career record of any active Korean men's sprint athlete – winning two consecutive silver medals in the men's 500m at Beijing 2022 after PyeongChang 2018. Cha Min-kyu was only 0.01 seconds behind Norway's Hoval Holmefio Laurensen in Pyeongchang and 0.07 seconds behind China's Gao Tingyu in Beijing.

Cha Minkui is posing after the pre-competition training for the 2025 Harbin Asian Winter Games held at the speed skating oval venue of the Heilongjiang Ice Training Center on the 5th.

It is reported that Cha Min-kyu, who has achieved amazing results in the sprint event at every Winter Olympics, will not participate in the men's 500m race at the 2025 Harbin Asian Winter Games. He will only compete in the men's 1000m and men's team pursuit. After Che Minkui finished the official training held at the speed skating oval venue of the Heilongjiang Provincial Ice Training Center in Harbin on the 5th, he said frankly in an interview with reporters: "I am currently experiencing the problem of skates. ”

"Skates are coming to the end of their life, and as soon as you push hard, the position of the bottom of your foot changes," he said. Now it was time to change, and in order not to be reluctant, I finally gave up the sprint event. Cha Minkui finished fifth in the 500m at the national representative selection for the Harbin Asian Winter Games, and was only on the preliminary list of this event.

Cha Minkyu's focus is on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo next year. "At the end of the competition, I put on my skates and choose the right equipment," he says. I think it's a process of preparing for the Olympics and I'm going to be calm and go to training and competing. ”

But it's not that the prospects for the Harbin Asian Winter Games are a mess. Cha Min-kyu said: "My goal is to win a medal in the men's 1000m. I will do my best to achieve my goals. ”