Panipak Wongpattanakit: The Pride of Thailand's Taekwondo
- titatuchinda
- Aug 10, 2021
- 3 min read
After a one-year delay, the Olympics committee in Tokyo finally welcomed athletes from all over the world to compete on the 23rd of July. The sports festival lasted seventeen days, coming to an end on the 8th of August. Out of 86 countries, Thailand ranked 59th, with a total of two medals. Sudaporn "Taew" Seesondee earned the second medal after coming third in the women's lightweight boxing category. The person who got the first medal for Thailand was none other than Panipak "Tennis" Wongpattanakit. In this blog post, I will provide you with biographical information on Panipak and how she became the tenth athlete in Thailand to receive a gold medal in the Olympics.
Panipak was born on August 8th, 1997 in Surat Thani. That means she recently turned 24. Fifteen years ago, Panipak started participating in Taekwondo tournaments. Her first competition was in Phuket. She took on this challenge in the hope of getting her hands on the reward money. Her father promised to give Panipak 3,000 baht for a gold medal, 2,000 baht for a silver medal, and 1,000 for a bronze medal. Unfortunately, Panipak lost her match. This experience pushed Panipak to work even harder.
Throughout her teenage years, Panipak practiced every day and competed in every tournament. Panipak's father supported his daughter by paying for the plane tickets to various provinces. However, Panipak continued losing for another three years. Until one day, she snatched the first gold medal at the age of 13 in the 27th national youth sports event in Uttaradit Province for the "Under 42 kg" category. Choi Young Seok — a Korean coach who is in charge of training the Thai Taekwondo national team — saw Panipak's capabilities that day. With her tall height of 173 cm, Choi Young Seok believes that she has the potential to excel in this sport. So he invited her to train with him.
Despite the rough beginnings, Panipak achieved several breakthroughs in her Taekwondo career. She became the "champion" in many events in the past 8 years. Here are a few of her impressive titles: 2nd place in the 2013 Youth Olympic, Asia champion (2014 and 2016), world champion (2015 and 2019), SEA games champion (2017 and 2019), Asian games champ in 2018, and more. Currently, Panipak received 27 championship titles and owned two Olympic medals. She has not lost to anyone for almost 1,000 days and her record continues after the Tokyo Olympics ended.
On Saturday 24th July, Panipak competed in the women's "Under 49 kg" category. She encountered four opponents in one day and managed to defeat every single one of them. In the round of 16, Panipak won Semberg Avishag — a competitor from Israel who ranked third in the tournament — by a wide margin with a score of 29 - 5 at 11:38 am. She entered the quarterfinal round and gained victory over Truong Thi Kim Tuyen — a competitor from Vietnam who ranked seventh in the tournament — with a score of 20 -11 at 2:30 pm. Panipak qualified for the semifinal round and faced Miyu Yamada, a competitor from Japan who ranked fifth in the tournament. She advanced to the final round by defeating Miyu with a score of 34-12 at 4 pm.
In her last match at 9:30 pm, Panipak competed with Adriana Cerezo for the gold medal. Panipak's final opponent is a seventeen-year-old girl from Spain who ranked second in the tournament. This competition got many people on the edge of their seats because the result was very close. If you turn off the television thirty seconds before the match ends, you will conclude that Adriana probably wins. However, if you watch the whole competition, you will find out that Panipak turned the game around in her favor. She changed her fate in seven seconds. In the end, Panipak brought the gold medal back to Thailand, with a score of 11-10.
Following her grand victory in the Olympics, Panipak becomes the first athlete to get a gold medal for Thailand's Taekwondo association. Prior to this achievement, there are several Thai athletes who won other medals for Thailand. Yaowapa Boorapolchai received a bronze medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Four years later, Buttree Puedpong received a silver medal in the Beijing Olympics. In the 2012 London Olympics, Chanatip Sonkham received a bronze medal. Five years ago, Tawin Hanprab received a silver medal at Rio.
The ultimate goal for most athletes is to get their hands on an Olympic gold medal. Once they achieve this feat, they might stop there. But not Panipak. Her next step is to earn the second gold medal from the Paris Olympics, which will happen in 2024. I and many Thai people hope that time will fly fast so that we can watch Panipak on the world's most prestigious sports event again.
Here is a list of the sources that I used to write this blog post:
Comments