Rower Park Hyun-su grabs bronze in lightweight men’s single sculls event at Asian Games

Park Hyun-su grabbed bronze in the lightweight men's single sculls rowing event at the Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026 on Thursday for Korea's first and only rowing medal here.

Park finished third in the 2,000-meter race with a time of 6:53.35 at Nagaragawa International Regatta Course in Aisai, west of the host city of Nagoya.

Chiu Hin Chun of Hong Kong won the gold in 6:50.32. Amirhossein Mahmoodpour Shahrestani of Iran beat Park over the final stretch for silver in 6:52.59.

In the lightweight men's rowing events, athletes must not weigh more than 72.5 kilograms (160 pounds).

Park was in third place at the halfway mark but moved into second place at the 1,500-meter mark at 5:10.52, about one second ahead of Mahmoodpour Shahrestani.

But the Iranian had the fastest split among the six finalists over the last 500 meters to snatch silver from Park.

Park, 30, won the 2018 Asiad gold in this event. The lightweight event was removed from the program for the 2023 Asiad but made its way back for this year.

Korean rowers reached finals in four other events, but all came up empty-handed.

In the men's quadruple sculls, the team of Kim Jee-hyuk, Kim Jong-min, Kim Dong-yong and Kang Woo-kyu finished last among six teams in the final with a time of 5:52.47, 6.44 seconds slower than gold medal-winning China.

Kim Ji-seo finished fifth out of six rowers in the lightweight women's single sculls at 7:54.79. She finished 30.22 seconds behind the champion, Fatemeh Mojallal Topraghghaleh of Iran.

Moon Jong-won and Kang Min-seong finished fourth in the men's pair with a time of 6:40.34. They were a full five seconds back of the bronze medalists, Maksim Golubev and Alisher Turdiev of Uzbekistan.

And in the women's double sculls, Kim Seung-hyeon and Park Ji-youn also placed fourth at 7:05.82, a little over three seconds slower than the bronze medal team from Vietnam, Tran Thi Tu Uyen and Pham Thi Bich Ngoc.

Rowing races were compressed from five days to two days, Wednesday and Thursday, due to the effects of Typhoon Dujuan.

Yonhap