(LEAD) Olympic speed skating champ Lee Sang-hwa finishes second at World Cup on home ice

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By Yoo Jee-ho

SEOUL, Nov. 21 (Yonhap) -- Olympic champion Lee Sang-hwa finished second in the opening 500-meter race at the International Skating Union (ISU) Speed Skating World Cup in Seoul on Friday, as her early season winning streak was snapped unceremoniously on home ice.

Lee, the two-time Olympic champ, finished second among 20 skaters with a time of 38.18 seconds at Taeneung International Rink. Nao Kodaira of Japan, who skated alongside Lee in the final pairing, won the title in 38.05 seconds.

The second 500ｍ race is scheduled for Saturday.

The Seoul competition is the second of seven World Cup events this season. Lee had won both of the 500ｍ races in the first leg held in Japan last week.

This was Lee's first loss at a World Cup since March 2013, when she won the bronze in the opening 500ｍ race in the World Cup Final.

She won seven World Cup titles in the 500ｍ last season and grabbed her second straight Olympic gold in the distance in Sochi, Russia, in February.

Lee, who owns the world record of 36.36 seconds, was ahead of Kodaira after the first 100ｍ, 10.41 seconds to 10.51 seconds, but the Japanese charged out in front after the final turn for the victory.

Kodaira had finished second behind Lee in each of the two 500ｍ races last week.

Despite coming up short of a title, Lee said after the race she was actually relieved to have her winning streak end.

"I think all that talk about my winning streak put some pressure on me," she confessed. "But I can't win all the time."

Lee said the two wins in Japan last week gave her a great boost, since she hadn't expected herself to even reach the podium at the start of the first season since the Olympics. Now that the streak has ended, Lee said she will try to start a new one and go back to the drawing board.

She said she made "a slight mistake" at the first corner, but refused to blame the mediocre surface at Taeneung or her nagging knee injury.

"I could go on making excuses about my knee and health, but I don't want to do that," Lee added. "Kodaira skated well in the first leg (in Japan), and I just didn't have a good race today.

Also in the women's 500ｍ, Park Seung-hi, former short track star, finished 11th in her Division A debut in 39.13 seconds.

Park switched from short track to the long oval in August, and made the national team in October. In last week's World Cup in Japan, Park won the second 500ｍ race in Division B with a personal best time of 39.05, earning the promotion to Division A for this week.

Later on Friday, Mo Tae-bum, the 2010 Olympic champ in the men's 500ｍ, finished second in the distance in 35.363 seconds, one-thousandth of a second ahead of Russia's Ruslan Murashov.

Earlier in the day, South Korea's Kim Bo-reum finished ninth in the women's 5,000ｍ in 7:26.63.

jeeho@yna.co.kr
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