Park Woo-hyuk (Samsung S-One) won the men’s 80-kilogram taekwondo gold medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games for the fourth consecutive day. Park defeated world number one Salih Elsharabati (Jordan) by a round robin score of 2-0 (8-4 6-5) in the final of the men’s 80 kg taekwondo event at the Lin’an Sports and Cultural Exhibition Center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China on Sunday. It has been 21 years since Korea has won gold in this weight class (78 kg until Doha 2006) at an Asian Games since the 2002 Busan Games .Elsharabati, a silver medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was the ‘favorite’ in this weight class, but lost the gold to Park Woo-hyuk. Park took a 5-0 lead early in the first round after landing back-to-back strikes to the body and forcing his opponent to take a point deduction, but a head attack with 43 seconds left in the round and a point deduction with 16 seconds left in the round left him trailing 4-5.However, Park Woo-hyuk made a last-minute comeback and scored a head attack with seven seconds left. He immediately requested a video review and the decision was overturned, giving Park the first round 8-4.In the second round, Park was the first to land a body attack. This, coupled with two opponent penalties, gave him a 4-0 lead with 45 seconds to go.A rattled Elsharabati fought back in the final round. In nine seconds, he landed a series of head and body attacks to bring the score to 5-4 with 36 seconds left .However, Woo Hyuk Park kept his feet on the ground and squeezed out the last bit of energy, forcing his opponent to take two more penalty points to win the second round 6-5.In the quarterfinals, Park defeated Mehran Barghourdari (IRAN) with a hard-fought 2-1 (6-3 8-11 10-10) round score .As in the third round of this match, in the event of a tie, the winner was determined by counting spinning techniques and head and body attack attempts, and Park was declared the winner of the fourth round and advanced to the final. Unlike the closely contested final and semifinals, the rounds of 16 and 8 breezed by with overwhelming performances. In the round of 16, he defeated India’s Shivanshi Thiyaji 2-0 (15-6 15-1), and in the quarterfinals, he easily defeated Thailand’s Jack Woody Mercer 2-0 (12-6 13-7).Park’s victory gave Korea its fourth consecutive gold medal in taekwondo on the 24th day of the Games .Kang Wan-jin (Hongcheon-gun) and Cha Ye-eun (Kyung Hee University) won gold in the Poomsae event on the 24th, followed by Jang Joon (Korea Gas 스포츠토토존 Corporation – Men’s 58kg) on the 25th and Park Hye-jin (Goyang City Hall – Women’s 53kg) on the 26th.