Viktor An

Viktor An (Виктор Ан; born Ahn Hyun-soo (안현수) on November 23, 1985), is a South Korean-born Russian short-track speed skating coach and retired short-track speed skater.

With a total of eight Olympic medals, six gold and two bronze, he is the only short track speed skater in Olympic history to win gold in every distance, and the first to win a medal in every distance at a single Games.

Ahn began skating in 1993 in his first year of primary school.

The first time he watched the sport on television was during the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer where one of his heroes, Chae Ji-hoon, took gold in the 500 m and silver in the 1000 m for South Korea.

Incidentally, these were the Games where Russia achieved a national record of 11 Olympic golds, a feat that he himself would help to repeat twenty years later.

His coach, Kim Ki-hoon, was a three-time Olympic gold medalist who scouted Ahn and continued to train him.

He trained ten hours every day from techniques, speed, and endurance to video analysis.

Ahn made his international debut at the World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championships in 2002.

Finishing first in the 1500 m, 1000 m, and 5000 m relay events, he claimed the overall title.

Ahn then participated in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

He made the finals for the 1000 m event but returned home without a medal, after a controversial fall involving Apolo Ohno, Li Jiajun, and Mathieu Turcotte that allowed Australian Steve Bradbury to sweep the gold medal.

Ahn finished in fourth place, behind Ohno and Turcotte.

After the 2002 Olympics, Ahn finished second to Kim Dong-sung at his first senior-level world championship competition the same year, almost duplicating Kim's feat of winning both the Junior and Senior World Championship titles in 1997.

Ahn began dominating the sport from the 2002–2003 season.

As well as claiming four overall and 1500 m World Championship titles in a row between 2003 and 2006, Ahn excelled himself at 1000 m and 3000 m during that period and also starred with the Republic of Korea's 5000 m relay team.

Considered to be the greatest short track speed skater of all time, he is a six-time overall World champion (2003-2007, 2014), two-time overall World Cup winner (2003–04, 2005–06), and the 2014 European champion.

He holds the most overall titles at the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships, and is the only male short track skater to win five consecutive world titles.

In all, he won a total of 23 medals in that prolific spell, and took the 2004 and 2006 World Cup titles for good measure.

He also set the world records for the 1500 m in 2003 at World Cup #2 in Marquette and the 3000 m at World Cup #4 in Beijing, which he held for the following eight years.

South Korea has produced many outstanding short track speed skaters and is highly competitive in selecting the national team.

Their key method of selecting players is to automatically select the best players in advance according to the comprehensive podium rankings of the World Championships.

He has the most Olympic gold medals in the sport, three of which he won in the 2006 Winter Olympics and the other three in the 2014 Winter Olympics.

In 2008, Ahn suffered a knee injury and could not regain his health by the time the national qualifiers for Vancouver 2010 came around.

His recovery being slow and his South Korean local team dissolved in 2010, Ahn, aiming for his second Olympics, became a Russian citizen the next year and began racing for the Russian team.

After winning gold in Sochi, Ahn explained his reasons for joining the Russian team saying, "I wanted to train in the best possible environment and I proved my decision was not wrong."

As expected, a gold-winning athlete leaving the national team caused public uproar in South Korea.

However, it was aimed not at Ahn, but at the country's skating union.

Most South Korean fans in a poll said they understood his decision.

However, since his change in 2014 he had been increasingly criticized for his work in Russia amid the Russo-Ukrainian War and his coaching position in the Chinese team at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Some Korean coaches have formed The Korea Skating Coaches' Union and urged "Seongnam City to appoint a coach that meets the public eye level" and criticized Ahn that he "lied during the naturalization process and betrayed his country".

and He was criticized by the public for betraying his country by transferring Korean sports skills to Russia and China.

Ahn was eventually denied the coaching position due to significant public opposition.

After being denied his position as Seongnam City Hall coach due to strong public opposition, Ahn explained the controversy he knew about his loss of nationality in advance and receives a full Olympic medal pension prior to Russian naturalization.

he said: "I donated every pension I had received prior to naturalization".

According to his explanation and a Korean ice skating official mentioned in Chosun Ilbo shortly thereafter, the entire lump sum pension he received was spent on rehabilitating "children who needed heart surgery and Korean junior players".

And he make his first start as a Korean Sports leader, being named as a coach in the 2023-2024 national team trials at the request of his juniors.

The Korea Skating Union officially announced this through Yonhap News Agency, and the Korean media reported it collectively.

Ahn continued his skating career in his adopted nation until 2019 and declared his retirement in April 2020.

In 2023, Ahn returned to Korea as a short track leader.

Ahn returned to South Korea and applied to be a coach for Seongnam City's short track speed skating team, despite having renounced his South Korean citizenship when becoming Russian.