Short Track Skating Star Shim Suk-hee Banned from Beijing Olympics

Olympic short track speed skating champion Shim Suk-hee has been slapped with a two-month suspension from competition with just around 40 days left before the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Korea Skating Union in a disciplinary committee meeting on Tuesday suspended Shim for “failing to live up to the responsibilities of a national team member and seriously harming the dignity of a skater” by belittling teammates in expletive-filled text messages.

Shim denigrated her coach and teammates during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The offense came to light when text messages she exchanged with her coach were leaked to the media in October this year.

She was also accused of deliberately barging into teammate Choi Min-jung in the 1,000-m finals at Pyeongchang and illegally recording conversations with others in the locker room, and suspected of match fixing in the International Skating Union Short Track Speed Skating World Cup in 2016 and 2017 East Asian Games.

The skating union investigated the allegations for a month and said earlier that the only one that was substantiated was the belittling text messages.

Shim won the 3,000-m relays at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics and found herself at the center of a “Me Too” scandal in early 2019 when she spoke out about sexual assault she had long suffered by her coach, Cho Jae-beom. Cho was sentenced to 13 years behind bars.

After an ankle injury later in 2019, she had not been able to participate in tryouts for the national squad until she could return this May.

She seemed to be on her way back to the top until she was excluded from national team training over the allegations and banned from competing in the ISU World Cup matches.

The latest suspension also shuts her out of the Beijing Winter Olympics. She could still file an appeal but time is not on her side since the ISU’s deadline for the final Olympic rosters is just a month away on Jan. 24.