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Disgraced former Olympic swimming champion Park Tae-hwan will soon return to competition after nearly 18 months away, having recently served his doping suspension, his agency said Monday.
Team GMP said Park will race at the 88th Dong-A Swimming Competition starting next Monday in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers south of Seoul. He has registered to compete in the men's 100m, 200m, 400m and 1,500m freestyle races.
It will be Park's first competitive appearance since the National Sports Festival in November 2014. Park served an 18-month international doping suspension that began retroactively in September 2014 and ended in March this year.
The competition will double as the second round of the national team trials for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. However, Park is ineligible for the Olympics because of his doping history.
Under a Korean Olympic Committee rule guiding national team operations, athletes who have served doping suspensions aren't allowed to represent the country for three years, starting on the day their bans end.
The KOC had been under pressure to amend its rule, as critics pointed out that the rule punishes athletes twice for the same offense. The KOC maintained that it would not create exceptions for particular athletes and announced earlier this month there would be no revisions.
The situation put Park in limbo at age 26, and he'd remained on the fence on whether to enter the Dong-A race until Monday.
The 2008 Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle tested positive for testosterone and was slapped with the ban in March 2015. The suspension took effective retroactively in September 2014, when FINA, the international swimming governing body, collected Park's urine sample.
Park, who has also won three Olympic silver medals and two world titles, has been training in Australia since March and is scheduled to return home on Thursday. He remains the only South Korean with an Olympic swimming medal.
His first race will be the 1,500m freestyle next Monday, followed by 200m, 400m and 100m over the next three days.
Team GMP said Park will race at the 88th Dong-A Swimming Competition starting next Monday in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers south of Seoul. He has registered to compete in the men's 100m, 200m, 400m and 1,500m freestyle races.
It will be Park's first competitive appearance since the National Sports Festival in November 2014. Park served an 18-month international doping suspension that began retroactively in September 2014 and ended in March this year.
The competition will double as the second round of the national team trials for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. However, Park is ineligible for the Olympics because of his doping history.
Under a Korean Olympic Committee rule guiding national team operations, athletes who have served doping suspensions aren't allowed to represent the country for three years, starting on the day their bans end.
The KOC had been under pressure to amend its rule, as critics pointed out that the rule punishes athletes twice for the same offense. The KOC maintained that it would not create exceptions for particular athletes and announced earlier this month there would be no revisions.
The situation put Park in limbo at age 26, and he'd remained on the fence on whether to enter the Dong-A race until Monday.
The 2008 Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle tested positive for testosterone and was slapped with the ban in March 2015. The suspension took effective retroactively in September 2014, when FINA, the international swimming governing body, collected Park's urine sample.
Park, who has also won three Olympic silver medals and two world titles, has been training in Australia since March and is scheduled to return home on Thursday. He remains the only South Korean with an Olympic swimming medal.
His first race will be the 1,500m freestyle next Monday, followed by 200m, 400m and 100m over the next three days.
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