Apolo Ohno significantly improved performance by shifting from long training sessions to shedding weight.

“I just I really felt prepared could I have done it differently absolutely could I've gone back and implemented Sport Science and other elements that we now know would have dramatically increased my performance ratio yes but the process of going through that and hardening my mentality and going through those dark times where you're questioning yourself being in a sauna alone everyday sweating and meditating and visualizing to be your absolute greatest potential thinking about not an Almond more on Alman less that goes into your body like on a daily basis like that obsession is fatiguing but also really beautiful thinking back and I miss it immensely but it was a huge burden and and weightlessness and victory personal victory that took a whole team to get me to that point when I arrived in Vancouver I had an incredible world Epic Games didn't actually end up winning in gold in those games but still feeling like I won and having the most consistent Olympics that are out of my life in that transition from oh seven oh eight oh nine as you're completely changing your style completely changing your body changing the way you train adjusting to a sport that is still basically and probably a profound evolution more so than a sport that's been around for hundreds of years or at least been in Olympic sport for hundred years it's still in that growth curve of figuring out the balance between technical versus strength versus power what was it like to go back to Korea in is it was a no seven you went back to live in Korea with you know seven yep and I know we sort of talked about this before but you had kind of an interesting homecoming back to Korea post o2 right right which was a no.4 we kind of glossed over that a little bit but for two years you didn't go back right yes so after the 2002 Olympic Games when I had won that gold medal in the 1500 meters and the South Korean was disqualified thus began this like really interesting relationship with the country of South Korea and I had mentioned that I was the second most hated person in South Korea first was Osama bin Laden we received 15,000 16,000 death threats via email which crashed the United States Olympic Committee servers during the Olympic Games so instantaneously we knew that that country was very unhappy with what had just happened and it was a subjective call not made by me but made by a referee who was the corner judge who decided this thing that there was a cross-tracking penalty and I was awarded could have went either way if you replay the race again with different judges so fast forward to the 2002 World Cup soccer world cup and it was Korea versus United States a Korean athlete scores the first goal rips off his jersey underneath the jersey painted on his back is my last name oh age I know oh no and they essentially do a replay of that race on the soccer field and pretend and they throw the arms up and everything basically showcasing that they think that that was a misstep in the judging call and I should not have been awarded gold so they were really fated with that result it was also a time in which I think anti-american sentiment within the country was at it's probably peak and you know a lot of people were kind of pointing fingers about things that were happening inside the country that involved Americans and could have been penalized should have been penalized for their actions in the country and they weren't and they were let off and so they thought that this was not okay and outside these decisions and courtroom areas that these things were happening but people were chanting my name as if I had anything to do with any of those incidents in any capacity so again it was a really sensitive time and it escalated even further because these death threats continued on throughout the year so much so that like my face was on toilet paper inside Korea where they were selling this and you can imagine like that's a crazy thing to have happen I had a lot of friends who were in service who in the country and they were like dude you are not liked in this country like do not come here it's not okay like people they don't even watch speed skating they don't know the sport they don't know you they just know they're supposed to hate you and so this spread this nationalism inside South Korea was always strong and they're very patriotic people and very passionate and they just they got behind this thing that I was not the good guy and we compete every single year in these World Cups right so from 2002 to 2004 we had probably three World Cups that were supposed to be in Seoul all three we opted out not to go now those are important World Cups those give you the world ranking in order to get best seated for you to world championship so it had to be pretty devastating for us to not go and we just didn't know what the threat was gonna be we didn't know if it was gonna be real we weren't we weren't certain of all it takes is one crazy person to make a you know an action and something could happen and my father definitely didn't want me to go and the only son he felt that the threat was real and he just wasn't worth it it's only sport right why would you put yourself in danger and at risk and to me I just I felt I was really hurt I think emotionally because I grew up around the Korean culture”