After lengthy struggle, veteran swimmer An Se-hyeon falls back in love with her sport

An Se-hyeon, a veteran swimmer from Korea, has recently rekindled her passion for her sport after a long period of wavering interest. For around eight years now, she had been fluctuating between love and disinterest in swimming. At the peak of her abilities around 2017 and 2018, she achieved remarkable success. At the 2017 world championships in Budapest, she secured the fourth position in the women's 200-meter butterfly, a feat that remains the highest placement by a Korean female swimmer at the competition.

Her time of 2:06.67 still holds the national record for this event. At the same championships, she established the national record with a time of 57.07 seconds in the 100-meter butterfly, which has remained unbeaten since. In 2018, An claimed two bronze medals at the Asian Games, one in the 100-meter butterfly and another in the 4x100-meter mixed medley relay.

Despite being in her early twenties at that time, seemingly entering her prime, she gradually disappeared from the limelight as the rest of the Korean swimming team started accumulating medals at the Olympics, Asian Games, and world championships. An became an overlooked name. Now aged 30, she has once again surfaced. She qualified for this year's Asian Games by winning the 50-meter butterfly title at the national team trials in March. Following this victory, she participated in a training session on Tuesday at the Jinch venue.