Korea enjoyed a good start at Rio 2016 with a victory over Asian rival Japan
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 6, 2016 – Korea relied on strong serves and their other offensive weapons to neutralize the normally good defence of Japan in the first match of the women’s volleyball tournament of Rio 2016 at Maracanazinho Stadium on Saturday.
Kim Yeon Kuong, Captain of Korea: Japan are known for their strong defense so we concentrated in our strong serves and blocking and the other part of our offence. I am happy because we tried very hard to prepare for this tournament. I hope we continue playing like this.
Lee Jung Chul, Coach of Korea: It was our first game and we started struggling a little bit but then we were able to recover and managed to conclude with the victory.
Saori Kimura, Captain of Japan: It was our first match and against our Asian opponent. The first set was very good for us but then we made too many mistakes. The good thing is that we have more matches to recover.
Masayoshi Manabe, Coach of Japan: As our captain Kimura said we made too many mistakes and need to improve in our next matches. The key for those mistakes was, first the players were a little bit nervous but also Korea pressed with their very strong serves and our reception was bad.
More from Kim Yeon Kuong:
On her leadership in the team:
“I am a different player now because I’ve had a lot of experience playing overseas like in Europe and Japan, so now I can help the team because they are young. Now I can speak to them and this really helped me to improve my personality and our play.”
On her goals for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games:
“We want to take a medal, but I do not want to think about it right now. I want to take it one match at a time. We play Russia in the next match. They are really tall and they have really good spikers, so we have to prepare well for them.”
On being the top scorer for the team:
“I don’t really think about top scoring, I just want to win. I think that we won today because I got a lot of help from my team-mates and that’s how it should be.”