South Korea claimed its first esports gold medal from Street Fighter V at the 19th Asian Games in China on Thursday, where the video gaming competition made its debut as an Asiad program.
In the final of the Street Fighter V: Champion Edition competition at China Hangzhou Esports Centre in Hangzhou, China, South Korean gamer Kim Gwan-woo beat Hsiang Yu-Lin of Chinese Taipei 4-3.
Kim became South Korea’s first Asian Games gold medalist in esports, first contested as an official medal event at the Asiad in Hangzhou.
The competitive video game tournaments, especially among professional gamers, served as a demonstration sport in the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.
Kim, 44, is the oldest member of the South Korean delegation to the Hangzhou Asian Games, having started his gaming career in the late 1990s.
He started to play the Street Fighter series from the 2000s and finally competed in the major sporting event.
After a neck-and-neck final, Kim became the inaugural Street Fighter champion at the Asian Game
s.
He started the first set playing Vega, while Hsiang came up with Lucia.
Kim took the first set, but the Taiwanese won back a set in the second. The two exchanged two more sets and entered the final seventh set, in which Kim knocked out his opponent to win the historic event.
Street Fighter is a 36-year-old popular fighting video game that features a head-to-head battle with a variety of attacks and special abilities.
The oldest gold medalist in the Korean team said he is proud of becoming the Asian Games champion at the age of 44 and happy to encourage people in his generation to forget their age.
“I thought ‘I’m not over yet. I’m going to keep fighting,’ when I won the gold medal,” the gold medalist gamer said in the mixed zone. “Now, I’m so old that I feel helpless from time to time when I try to do something. But I regained my form after long exercise. If you work hard and get confidence, all of us can win a gold medal.”
 
Source: Yonhap News Agency