Olympian Skylar Park mixes taekwondo with teaching

SKYLAR Park was six years old when she told a reporter she planned to be an Olympic athlete one day.

That item was checked off her to-do list three years ago. The role-model piece and becoming the public face of taekwondo in Canada has been part of a natural evolution.

“I have the ability to stand in front of people and tell them about my experiences and feel like I have something to share,” says the 24-year-old Winnipegger, now with more than a decade of international experience under her black belt.

“Obviously, I don’t know it all. I don’t know a lot. But I feel like I have a little bit of knowledge to share with the younger generation of athletes and young people. So, the ability to do that is really exciting.”

And so, with preparations for her second appearance at the Summer Olympics barely four months away, Park is branching out.

Teaming up with her mom, Andrea, she’s hosting a free event on March 23 at her family’s Tae Ryong Park Academy that combines a belated celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8) with a kickoff to the 2024 Paris Olympic season.

Plans include sessions for younger girls, a mother-daughter group, and older teens and adults, with an introduction to taekwondo and women’s self defence.

No martial arts experience is required.

“I’ve talked to my friends about it and they’ve said we want to learn and know self defence in any case where we need to defend ourselves,” says Skylar. “It’s just nice to have. It gives you that extra level of confidence when you’re walking around or whatever you’re doing in your life.”

The discipline and competitive elements of taekwondo had a transformative effect on Skylar.

“When she was young she was quite shy, she was quite a little bit more timid and then when she got her black belt, when she was seven, it’s almost like a light flicked on,” says Andrea Park, a black belt herself. “She became this very confident, very outgoing, very strong presence.”

Skylar, who was touted as a medal contender before being eliminated in the quarterfinals at the Tokyo Olympics, says the event is, in part, a way of saying thank you.

“After competing at the Games and really not performing up to what I was expected to or what I had hoped to achieve, and still coming home and feeling that love and support from my community,” she says.

“Or even right after the Games while I was in Tokyo. I was getting flooded with messages of support from people in the community telling me how proud they were of me. That was a very important thing for me to kind of realize, is that the community is behind me, no matter what.”

While her dad, Jae, has a prominent public profile as the coach of his three children, Skylar says her mom plays a major role, too.

“My mom just keeps everything together and she does so much work behind the scenes to allow my brothers (Braven and Tae-Ku) and I to be successful at this level and to continue to be,” says Skylar. “I’ve been talking to her about this event and me wanting to do something like this for a long time, and she was really the one that pushed me to do it.”

With her increased profile, Skylar has sponsorship deals with Adidas and RBC that put her squarely in the public eye as a corporate spokesperson.

“We almost never see the professional side of her and her ability to give these workshops to people that are much older than her and have different positions,” says Andrea Park. “And so we just hear about it. It’s been interesting to watch her start to co-ordinate this (event) and put it together… It’s been a neat process to watch.”

If you want to participate in Skylar’s March 23 event, you can register by emailing her at Skylar.Paris2024@TRPAcademy.com to secure your spot.

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca