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SEOUL : Before he enters the pool in competitions, South Korea's young swimming sensation Park Tae-Hwan likes to listen to pop music on oversized headphones to block out the crowd noise.
That's how he deals with pre-race jitters. And he needs as much music as he can get right now.
Park's head coach, Noh Min-Sang, told AFP that the 18-year-old is feeling the pressure and he is "trying to be the bad cop" for him, turning down interview requests and shielding him from the public's eyes.
"Park seems really burdened by the expectations," Noh said.
"The kid is only 18. It doesn't do him any good when everyone is expecting an Olympic gold."
Whether he likes it or not, there is little question that Park is the best hope for Korea's first-ever Olympic swimming medal.
He stunned defending champion Grant Hackett to win the 400m freestyle title at the world championships in Melbourne last year in a time of three minutes 44.30 seconds.
This came after he burst onto the scene at the Asian Games in Doha in late 2006 where he swept seven swimming medals, including three gold.
Since then Park has established a new Asian 400m record time of 3:43.59 at a Korean meet in April.
Noh said the record was even more impressive given that "there was no one of his calibre pushing him in the next lane".
Considering his achievements, Park himself has driven up expectations for an Olympic medal. But, apparently, there is only so much he can handle.
Noh said that since the swimming squad returned from a two-week training camp in Guam on June 15, Park hasn't been himself.
"I think his physical strength is there, but he seems to have lost some of the edge that you need in order to compete," he said.
"It's hard to pinpoint things but I think it has more to do with his mental preparation than physical."
In the meantime, Noh is putting Park and the rest of the Korean Olympic swimming team through a rigorous regimen each day that begins with a 30-minute stretching session at 9am.
Then it's two hours of training in the pool. After a lunch break, the weight training follows in the afternoon and then another two-plus hours of in-water training awaits.
"It's difficult to say at this point whether our athletes are in their peak form, but after a couple of weeks, we'll find out," said Noh.
The coach said Park's main event will be the 400m freestyle, with Hackett, who took silver at the Athens Olympics behind compatriot Ian Thorpe, his main threat.
Hackett's personal best of 3:42.51, set in 2001, is the second-fastest time ever and Noh predicted the gold medal winner in Beijing would come in faster.
"I expect to see the winning time around three minutes and 40 seconds," the coach said. "It won't go past the 41-second mark."
Thorpe's world record time is 3:40.08.
Park, along with a slew of other swimmers, will be aided by the latest technology. He will compete in the Speedo LZR swimsuit: since it was introduced in February, swimmers wearing the suit have set 38 world records.
Noh, who acknowledged the swimsuit's benefits, said Park will don the half-body version rather than the full suit because the full-length version is too tight for his upper body.
"The most important thing is he has to feel comfortable in the water," Noh said. "Just because the full-length suit works on others doesn't mean Tae-Hwan should wear the same thing."
The swimsuit might be the least of Noh's concerns.
Four years ago at Athens the fidgety Park, then the youngest athlete representing Korea, was disqualified in the 400m freestyle heat after a false start.
And now Park appears to be fighting nerves again.
But Noh, who first met Park when he was seven, isn't overly concerned.
"Park is a smart young man and he will get himself ready somehow," he said. "I trust him."
- AFP/yb
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