Wardrobe malfunction mars routine of South Korean ice dancers
You work your entire life to make the Olympics and when you finally get there, a hook on your outfit flies open and you’ve become the Janet Jackson of the Winter Games.
It sounds like a bad dream.
And yet that nightmare almost became reality for Yura Min on Sunday.
The South Korean ice dancer and her partner Alexander Gamelin had just started their routine in the team competition when Min noticed the clasp on her back was undone.
That might not seem like that big of a deal, but as Min told Jeff Seidel of the Detroit Free Press it was a hook that held the entire outfit together. Min said she was “terrified” and that she couldn’t do the entire routine as planned because bringing her arms together would mean bringing her top down.
Watch it happen here:
“This is my first Olympics, our first program and if my top were to come down, that would have been a disaster” Min told the Free Press. “I was very nervous that the entire thing was going to come off.”
Gamelin backed his partner up.
“Anytime she brought her shoulders in, it came down,” he said. “I only noticed it halfway through. During our twizzle, it came off her shoulder, all of the way. She had to stop and pull it back up and that cost us a bunch of points. It wasn’t because we were skating poorly.”
Min and Gamelin are both American citizens and train in Michigan. They’re representing South Korea at these games as part of the host country’s “special naturalization” program that has helped boost their numbers for the 2018 Games.
While Min and Gamelin’s experience in the team left a lot to be desired — they finished ninth out of 10 pairs with 51.97 points — they’ll get a chance to make it right. They’ll compete in the regular ice dancing competition starting Feb. 18.
They won’t be leaving anything to chance either. They tell the Free Press they want to sew Min’s costume together for that one.
