Kim Jin Young

Happy birthday to South Korea’s Kim Jin-young, a 400m runner who said what she was going to do and then went and did it.

While she was still at Inha University, Kim Jin-young told an interviewer her goal was to join a corporate team after graduating and rank near the top of it. In 2025 she signed with **Gumi City Hall**, and in October, at the National Sports Festival in Busan, she took **silver in the 1600m relay and bronze in the mixed relay** in her first season as a professional. In April this year, at the 55th National Category Championships, she won **gold in the 1600m mixed relay**. Her personal best over 400m stands at 57.14, and in 2024 she won the university-division 400m at the national championships in Iksan, running a personal best in bad weather to do it.

She was not supposed to be a quarter-miler at all. Kim came into athletics in the fifth grade after winning a team-selection race at school, and spent her early years as a **long jumper and triple jumper**. An injury in high school pushed her onto the track, and the 400m turned out to be hers.

Her own summary of the event is the best thing anyone has written about it: in the 400m, even if you make a mistake at the start, you can still get a good result — as long as you don’t give up. That is exactly right, and it is also the reason the 400m breaks so many people. It is the one race where the first mistake is not the one that beats you.

Korean athletics runs on corporate and municipal teams, which means an athlete’s career is tied to a city as much as to a federation. Hers is tied to Gumi, in North Gyeongsang, and she has been paying it back in relay medals since the day she arrived.

생일 축하드립니다, 진영 선수! 늘 건강하시고 웃음 가득한 날들 보내세요. 아자아자 파이팅! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇰🇷