Swimmer Park Tae-Hwan Wins 4 Golds in Santa Clara
By wchung | 06 May, 2025

South Korean swimmer Park Tae-hwan won the 200-meter freestyle event at the Santa Clara International Grand Prix Saturday. The win gave him a total of four gold medals at the event and boosted his prospects of winning another gold medal at the London Summer Games.

Park swam the men’s 200-meter freestyle in 1:46:88.

During the event’s first two days Park had won the 800-meter, 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle events. His time for the 100-meter race wasn’t good enough to qualify him for the same event in the London Olympics. Park said he used the race to check his pace for the 200-meter race.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics Park won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle and a silver in the 200-meter freestyle.

Park will return to Seoul for a brief visit before going to his training base in Brisbane, Australia for his last-stage training before heading to London via France. Since the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games Park has been training in Brisbane with Australian coach Michael Bohl.

Last June Park reclaimed his status as one of the world’s top freestylers with three gold medals at the Santa Clara Grand Prix. In the 100 freestyle Park beat American Olympic champion Michael Phelps for the first time with a time of 48.92 seconds after Phelps had won the 100 butterfly in 52.41 seconds earlier and was favored to dominate on his home turf.

Park has worked hard to make up for a devastating collapse at the 2009 World Championships. After winning Olympic gold in the 400-meter freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Park missed the cut for the 200, 400 and 1,500-meter finals at the Rome World Championships that year.

Since then he won three golds at the 2010 Asian Games. But those games are seen as a second-tier event because they do not include many of the world’s top swimmers. His Santa Clara wins, however, are seen as a good indicator of his readiness to win a gold or even two at the London Games.

Park is one of S. Korea’s top sports stars, enjoying nearly the same level of adulation as Kim Yu-na, figure-skating gold-medalist at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.