“I STARTED PLAYING LAWN BOWLS THANKS TO MY HUSBAND” “GOLD MEDAL FOR MY HUSBAND WHO COULDN’T COME TO APG”
“I started playing lawn bowls thanks to my husband, but he hasn’t been to the Asian Games, so I’ll have to win a gold medal for him, haha .”A total of 16 rinks on two greens at the Wenhui School Lawn Bowl Stadium in Hangzhou, China, saw non-stop qualifying action on the morning of the first day of the Lawn Bowl Qualification Group Stage at the Hangzhou 2022 Para Asia Games .National lawn bowler Im Jung (Sport Class B6 – Light Para Lawn Bowling Federation) overwhelmed India’s Devi Nirmala 21-3 in about an hour and 45 minutes .After taking four points in the first end, Im steadily built up her lead, creating ‘big ends’ with four points in the sixth and ninth ends, before adding a point in the 12th end to complete the 21-point win.
In lawn bowls, the player who scored in the previous end gets to roll the white jack (target ball-jack) in the next end, setting the target where he or she wants it to be, and Im scored in almost every end on the day, leading every end. As Im kept the jack relatively far back, India’s Nirmala struggled to control her power, rolling the ball so hard that it ended up in a ditch at the end of the rink or placing her ball far from the jack .Im, on the other hand, sometimes kept her ball close to the jack and sometimes hid her ball behind the jack so that she could maintain her first position even if the jack moved. After scoring a series of big points to end the first game early, Im spoke to the media after the match and said, “I couldn’t control my power at all,” and “It was a very disappointing game. I didn’t play well,” she sighed.
“I couldn’t control my power at all. I had to apply spin, but sometimes the ball hit the goal on the artificial turf and didn’t have any spin and just stretched out, and the grass was very slippery,” she said. “All the players are in the same 슬롯게이밍 situation, so it’s important to see who adapts the fastest,” said Im, “I was so nervous, my heart was pounding in my chest, my hands were shaking, and I was going crazy .”Lee Woo-myung, head coach of the national lone ball team, also encouraged Im, saying, “We won the match, but she didn’t play well. She will do better in the future,” he encouraged .Born in 1968, Lee’s ‘disability birthday’ is January 27, 1989.At the age of 21, she underwent surgery for spinal inflammation and was told that the operation went well, but the nerves were damaged during the operation, leaving her paralyzed.
Confined to a wheelchair, she closed the door and built a wall between herself and the world. “I thought I was a person who couldn’t do anything and had to stay at home,” she says, but her husband, Shim Jung-sik, a former lawn bowler (Sport Class B7-Siheung Mayor’s Lawn Bowl Federation), encouraged her to take up lawn bowls, and she began to have the courage to live again. Shim is a top domestic player who took first place in both the men’s singles and doubles at the 2019 Lawn Bowl Asia Championships in Malaysia. “My husband used to play for the national team, but he was always eliminated in the selection process for the Asian Games,” says Im, who was selected to represent the country this year after the Hangzhou Para Asian Games were postponed by a year. “He told me to do my part in this tournament. I want to win a gold medal,” she smiled. “We are expecting seven gold medals out of the nine events our athletes are competing in,” said coach Lee Woo-myung, adding, “The biggest goal is for every athlete to win a medal.”