Four years ago this month, South Korea’s Kim Yuna became the undisputed queen of figure skating.
Her nickname had been “Queen” or “Queen Yuna” well before the 2010 Olympics, but in Vancouver, Kim delivered a performance of such artistic beauty, charisma, and splendor, it may never be surpassed. Her two programs at those Games—you can watch them here and here—both set record scores that stand today. The latter skate to clinch the gold medal, to Gershwin’s “Concerto in F,” was our generation’s Nadia Comaneci moment: the abstract of perfection made flesh. She engaged with the music with the sophistication of a prima ballerina, but attacked those seven minutes with the ruthlessness of an athlete so dominant she breaks the will of her competitors.
Even more impressive than Kim’s quality and margin of victory was the ability to perform her best when the stakes were highest. This, the glamour event of the Winter Olympics, was rarefied air for South Korea, whose 44 previous medals had all come in speed skating. And there were the political underpinnings: Kim’s two chief rivals for the gold medal were both from Japan, whose occupation of the Korean peninsula during the first half of the 20th century is deeply embedded in the region’s geopolitics.