Yang Hak-seon

Yang Hak-seon (Korean: 양학선; Hanja: 梁鶴善 ; born 6 December 1992) is a South Korean artistic gymnast who specialises on vault. He is the first South Korean gymnast to win an Olympic gold medal.

Yang Hak-Seon
Personal information
Full name	Yang Hak-Seon
Nickname(s)	The God of Vault
Country represented	South Korea
Born	December 6, 1992 Gwangju, South Korea
Height	1.61 m (5 ft 3 in)
Discipline	Men's artistic gymnastics
Eponymous skills	Yang
Medal record Event 1st 2nd 3rd Olympic Games 1 0 0 World Championships 2 0 0 Asian Games 1 2 0 Summer Universiade 1 1 0 Total 5 3 0 Men's artistic gymnastics Representing  South Korea Olympic Games 2012 London Vault World Championships 2011 Tokyo Vault 2013 Antwerp Vault Asian Games 2010 Guangzhou Vault 2014 Incheon Team 2014 Incheon Vault Summer Universiade 2013 Kazan Vault 2015 Gwangju Team

Yang Hak-seon
Hangul	양학선
Hanja	梁鶴善
Revised Romanization	Yang Hak-seon
McCune–Reischauer	Yang Hak-sŏn

Personal life

According to his Olympic profile, Yang started his gymnastics career at the age of 9, following his brother's footsteps.[1]

Yang is currently attending the Korea National Sport University.[2]

Yang's parents are Yang Gwan-gwon and Ki Suk-hyang.[3] Their impoverished family previously lived in one of Gwangju's shantytowns, before relocating to North Jeolla Province's Gochang, in South Korea's countryside, in 2010, after his father, a construction worker, suffered from serious injuries.[3] His family currently lives in a makeshift converted greenhouse constructed from PVC pipes.[2] After Yang's father lost his job, Yang supported the family with a modest income from the Korea Gymnastic Association.[4] Yang's coach Cho Sung-doe admitted that he had been unaware of the family's precarious financial situation before Yang won the gold medal.[4]

Career

Yang placed fourth and just missed medaling in the individual vault final at the 2010 World Championships in Rotterdam, and would later become vault champion at the 2010 Asian Games and then 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, Japan. In 2012, he became the first Korean gymnast to win Olympic gold in gymnastics, winning the vault competition in London.[3] In 2013, he went on to win gold in vault at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan, Russia. He is famous in the gymnastics world for performing one of the five hardest vaults in the world, the Yang Hak Seon, which is a front handspring on and into three twists off in a layout position. It was unveiled at the in the individual vault final at the 2011 World Championships, and initially carried the highest ever difficulty score (D-score) of 7.4 in men's vault at the time under the 2009-2012 Code of Points (CoP). The difficulty value of the Yang Hak Seon has been adjusted at the beginning of subsequent quads since, initially down to 6.4 under the 2012-2016 CoP and now further to 6.0 under the current 2017-2020 CoP. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) regularly reassesses and adjusts D-scores (typically down) due to the steady advancement of general skill levels over time in gymnastics, especially on vault because of its D-scores being assigned numeric values instead of alphabetical representations like with the other apparatuses—vault is the only apparatus in gymnastics to have that simply due to the nature of the apparatus. Yang is additionally said to be working on a second difficult vault, but this one is a sideways entry.[5]

Yang was a reigning world champion, having won gold in vault at both the 2011[6] and 2013 World Championships in Tokyo and Antwerp respectively.[7] However, at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning, China, he fell on both of his vaults—the first for which it was announced in Nanning that he was widely expected but failed to received naming credit for a brand new top then 6.4 difficulty vault, initially dubbed the Yang Hak Seon 2, or a straight Tsukahara with 3½ twist—failing to defend his title and finished in seventh place with a final average combined score of 14.416 after qualifying in first place. Without any worthy competition, Ri Se Gwang of North Korea won the gold medal with two top then 6.4 difficulty vaults that were both named after him, the Ri Se Gwang (full-twisting double Tsukahara) and Ri Se Gwang 2 (double front piked with ½ twist), and outscored Yang by exactly one full point (15.416). He was similarly unable to defend his Olympic title at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro due to injury. At the 2017 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Montreal, Canada, Yang had "qualified" (Q) in first place for the vault event final but pulled out after that because he had sustained a hamstring injury during qualifications. Unimpeded and with little resistance, Kenzo Shirai of Japan won his world individual vault title with an averaged combined score of 14.900 ahead of vault's 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Ihor Radivilov of Ukraine by 0.001, the absolute slimmest of margins.

At the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Yang had qualified for the individual vault event final in first place, but finished eighth after falling out of the first vault—his own the Yang Hak Seon on vault, or front handspring (layout) triple twist—as well as incurring a 0.300 penalty for stepping out-of-bounds because of that. His training and preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, were adjusted for his performance to peak accordingly for one year due to 2019–20 COVID-19 pandemic.

Competitive history

Year	Competition(s)	All-Around		Individual Apparatus						Notes
		Team	Individual
2010
	World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands						4
	Asian Games in Guangzhou, China
2011
	World Championships in Tokyo, Japan
2012
	Olympic Games in London, England
2013	Summer Universiade in Kazan, Russia
	World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium	N/A
2014	Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea
	World Championships in Nanning, China						7
2015	Summer Universiade in Gwangju, South Korea
2017
	World Championships in Montreal, Canada	N/A					Q
2019
	World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany						8
2020
	Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan	Postponed one year due to coronavirus	Global pandemic

Eponymous skills

Apparatus	Name	Description	Difficulty	Notes
Vault	Yang Hak Seon	front handspring layout triple twist	6.0	Originated in the vault final at the 2011 Worlds as MAG's hardest vault at that time.

The difficulty above is in line with the 2017–2020 Code of Points. Yang currently shares the honour with only Kenzō Shirai and Hidenobu Yonekura, both of Japan, and Ri Se Gwang of North Korea for having at least one of the five skills with the highest D-score of 6.0 in men's vault under the FIG's most current 2017–2020 Code of Points to be named after them. The Yang Hak Seon is a front handspring (forwards) entry family vault (as opposed to all of Shirai's vaults belonging to the Yurchenko or round-off [backward] entry family), and it has a front handspring take off (forwards) entry onto the vaulting platform and then into a triple-twisting layout off the platform to finish in a blind landing. The straight forward-entry Tsukahara with 3½ twist (or Kasamatsu with 2½ twist), now Yonekura, was the latest to be verified after it was successfully completed by Hidennobu Yonekura of Japan at the 2019 World Cup in Melbourne. Currently, the Ri (retired in 2020) owns two while Yang, Shirai and Yonekura own one each. Even though some may refer to the Yang Hak Seon vaults by just using Yang's surname, it is not quite accurate. This is because Yang's surname, like in Korean and Chinese names, is not customarily listed at the end; hence, Yang's entire name in customary order must officially be used in the naming of any skill he has originated. Although a gymnast may have officially received naming credit for a skill, it is becoming more common for that name not to necessarily be used in practice. This is in light of the ever increasing number of eponymous skills across all events for MAG as well as identical corresponding skils for WAG, which would receive an official second name as well. Moreover, using eponymous names is getting more confusing outside of experts in the field. Therefore, technical abbreviations are also extensively used over official names when describing certain skills for them to be more readily understood by everyone. For example, the Yonekura is more widely just called "Tsukahara 3½" as the latter is easier to identify by more people. Also, the "2½-twisting Yurchenko" has two official names: the Shewfelt for MAG and Amanar for WAG. The latter is more popular in practice, and confusion has occurred depending on which situation the skill is being described.

References

1. "Hak Seon Yang". Athlete overviews. London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Retrieved 9 August 2012.
2. [런던] 양학선 꿈 자란 비닐하우스 들여다보니 '울컥'. Nate News (in Korean). NATE. 7 August 2012. Retrieved 9 August 2012.
3. Kang Seung-woo (August 7, 2010). "Korean gymnast rises from poverty". The Korea Times. Retrieved August 9, 2012.
4. Kwon, KJ; Alexis Lai. "Gymnastics Olympics 2012: Yang Hak-seon, South Korean gold gymnast, vaults from rags to riches". CNN. Archived from the original on 2012-08-12. Retrieved 9 August 2012.
5. Sport Chosun (October 6, 2013). "'도마의신'양학선 세계체조선수권 2연패,적수 없었다(in Korean)". Naver.
6. S (October 6, 2013). "Exciting showdown at Tokyo Worlds". Tokyo2011.fig-gymnastics.com.
7. S (October 6, 2013). "South Korea's Yang wins men's vault title at gymnastics worlds". Nampa.org.

External links

• YANG Hakseon at the International Gymnastics Federation
• Yang Hak-Seon (vault)