Kim Yun-ji, a 19-year-old para cross-country skier, claimed her fifth medal at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Paralympics on Sunday, setting a record for the most medals won by a South Korean athlete at a single Olympic or Paralympic Games.
Kim finished the cross-country skiing women's 20-kilometer interval start sitting event in 58 minutes and 23.3 seconds at the Tesero Cross-Country Stadium in Italy, beating Germany's Anja Wicker by 54 seconds and American four-time gold medalist Oksana Masters, who took bronze in 59:34.5.
The gold was her second of the Games, adding to three silvers across cross-country skiing and biathlon, for a total haul of five individual medals in her first-ever Paralympics.
The previous single-Games record for a South Korean athlete was four medals, held by short-track speed skater Viktor Ahn (formerly Ahn Hyun-soo) at the 2006 Turin Olympics and by wheelchair track athletes Kang Sung-guk and Hong Seok-man at past Paralympics.
All three tallies included team event medals, while Kim earned all five of hers in individual races.
Kim opened the Games on March 8 by winning the para biathlon women's individual 12.5-kilometer sitting event, becoming the first South Korean woman to win a Winter Paralympic gold. She then collected three silvers while competing across both biathlon and cross-country skiing before capping her campaign with Sunday's victory.
Heavy snow and rain overnight had left the course waterlogged, but Kim led from the early stages, briefly ceding the lead to Masters at the 6-kilometer mark before regaining it at 9 kilometers and pulling away in the second half of the seven-lap race.
With Kim's gold, South Korea finished the 2026 Winter Paralympics with two golds, four silvers and one bronze, its best-ever result at a Winter Paralympic Games, according to the Korean Paralympic Committee.
mjh@heraldcorp.com
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