MOSCOW, March 22 (RIA Novosti) - Triple Olympic champion speed skater Ahn Hyun-Soo said he has a “winning mindset” again after winning two Russian titles in his debut at the national championships Thursday.
Ahn won the 3,000-meter and 1,000-meter events at the short-track championships in Kolomna, his first titles as a Russian athlete.
The medals were less important than his state of mind, Ahn said.
“For me, these medals aren’t that important as such. The important thing is to feel confidence in myself again that I have returned to a winning mindset,” he said in remarks on the Russian Skating Union website.
Ahn lost out in the 1,500-meter event Tuesday, finishing second, 0.7 seconds behind winner Vyacheslav Kurginyan, which had dented his self-belief, he said.
“Psychologically this result is very important for me, because the first two days of the championships were not successful. I’d even started to think thoughts that were really not very good.”
In the 3,000-meter event, he finished in five minutes 2.455 seconds, 0.678 seconds ahead of second-placed Ruslan Zakharov and 3.439 ahead of Pavel Rybakov in third.
Ahn won the 1,000-meter race in one minute 31.894 seconds, 0.134 seconds ahead of Evgeny Kozulin in second and 0.832 ahead of third-placed Kurginyan.
Ahn won 32 world championship short-track medals, 20 of them gold, while competing for South Korea but switched allegiances to compete for Russia last year and now competes as Viktor Ahn.
At the world championships in Shanghai earlier this month, Ahn ran one leg of the men’s 5000-meter relay, but the team decided not to field him in any other events.
Ahn, 26, failed to qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and is now targeting a space in the Russia team for the 2014 games in the Russian resort of Sochi.
