Lee Kyou-hyuk (, born 16 March 1978) is a South Korean retired long track speed skater who specializes in the 500 and 1,000 meters. He was the 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 World Sprint Speed Skating Champion and the 2011 World Champion for 500 m. He is one of four men to have won the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships four times.
His first world sprint championship, in 2007, was his first International Championships medal after a 13-year top-level career. As well as his success in the World Sprint Championships, Lee has fourteen wins in individual World Cup races, a gold medal, two silver and one bronze from the World Single Distance Championships and four gold medals from the Asian Winter Games as well as numerous South Korean titles, including 10 successive National Sprint Speed Skating Championships (2001–2010). He has set two world records during his career.
Career
Junior
Lee made his debut in ISU events in 1992 at age 13, when he competed at the World Junior Championships in Warsaw. He did not qualify for the final distance, but his samalog total ranked him as 21st of 49 competitors and the second best from South Korea. He returned the following year but again failed to qualify, though he improved two places and was the best Korean after Bong Ju-hyeon got disqualified in the 1,500 meters.
In the 1994 season, Lee was sent to the first four World Cup races of the season as warm-up to the 1994 Winter Olympics at age 15. His best place came in Davos, where he was 21st of 36 on the 500 meters, but he earned no World Cup points. At the Olympics, Lee finished 36th at the 500 meters and 32nd at the 1,000 meters. At the World Junior Championships in Calgary, however, Lee qualified for the final distance for the first time and finished fourth overall, 0.098 points behind the bronze medalist.
Lee also finished fourth at the Junior Championships in 1995 and 1996, losing his lead after the opening three distances to long-distance specialists Bob de Jong and Mark Knoll. Nevertheless, he was selected to represent South Korea at the 1995 World Championships all round, where he finished fourth on the 500 meters but still failed to qualify for the final distance, ending as 20th. In the 1996 championship, however, he lowered the junior world record in the 500 meters to 36.59 seconds, though Jeremy Wotherspoon bettered it by 0.01 seconds two weeks later.
His World Cup placings improved little until 1996, when he got his first top ten placing of eighth at a World Cup meet in Medeo, though he still failed to place in the top 20 overall.
In his fourth international season as junior, Lee finished 21st in the World Allround after winning the 500 meters, and in eight World Cup appearances in 1997, Lee finished in the top ten three times, all on the 1,000 meters. He even made the podium 0.15 seconds behind winner Gerard van Velde at a race in Jeonju. This brought him up to 15th place overall in the 1,000 meter World Cup, though he did not skate in World Cup races in Europe or the world junior championships.
1998 to 2001
Over this period of his career, Lee was an out-and-out sprinter who only participated in the 500 and 1,000 meter races. Though he set a world record in the 1,500 meters, he never competed in World Cup races in that distance until 2002.
In the 1997–98 World Cup, Lee improved to 11th in the 1,000 meters and 16th in the 500 and won a World Cup race in Calgary with a world-record time of 1:10.42, his first world record. Over that weekend, the world record was cut 1.15 seconds. The record stood for a month until Jeremy Wotherspoon beat it in a domestic Canadian race. Lee missed the final two World Cup meets, before and after the Olympics, but after four of eight sprint events he was placed fifth in the 1,000 meters World Cup and tenth in the 500 meters World Cup. While still a world record holder, he won silver at the Asian Single Distance Championships in Obihiro, only beaten by fellow Korean Kim Yun-Man. Lee finished 12th at the World Sprint Championships in Berlin two weeks before the Olympics, and registered 8th (2 × 500) and 13th place (1,000) in his two Olympic appearances.
The following season was poor for Lee. He was relegated to the B group in the World Cup following finishes of between 25 and 38 in the opening race in Nagano, and did not figure in the top eight of the B group either. At the Asian Winter Games, he won silver on the 1,000 meters, but that tournament lacked the participation of the best Japanese skaters such as Hiroyasu Shimizu, Junichi Inoue and Yukinori Miyabe, who all beat Lee at the World Cup in Nagano.