Catching up with 2 athletes linked in lore — 7 years later

HOUSTON - Esther Kim and Kay Poe became linked in Olympic lore on May 20, 2000, when Kim forfeited a match at the Olympic Training Center to hand Poe a spot on the U.S. taekwondo team headed to the Summer Games in Sydney.

The story of friendship, sacrifice and sportsmanship spun around the world. Kim appeared on “Oprah” and in People and Cosmo Girl magazines. Taekwondo, which debuted as a medal sport in Sydney, never had so much publicity in the United States.

But at least in Poe’s case, the feel-good story morphed into a grittier reality.

Poe, now 25, hoped to redeem herself at the 2004 Athens Games after losing her first and only match in Sydney but left taekwondo in 2003 because a “really bad” eating disorder sent her in and out of hospitals, she said during a May interview.

Strapped for cash, Poe said she danced topless in Los Angeles for a couple of months.

“It’s not a very easy lifestyle,” she said. “It’s pretty pathetic.”

Not long after leaving strip clubs for good, Poe said, she checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic to overcome a methamphetamine addiction. She said she’s clean and working as an assistant buyer for a tire importing company in Houston.

“I went through a really rough time whenever I stopped competing. There was definitely some drugs involved,” Poe said. “But without that time, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I love my life now.”

Poe, who lived at the OTC when she was 15 and traveled overseas with USA Taekwondo teams, said she didn’t blame USA Taekwondo for her choice of a path that began with underage drinking and casual sex with teammates.

“I’m sure there was inappropriate stuff that happened,” Poe said. “I have to take responsibility for that most of the time. I was drunk and not doing what I should have been doing.

“There were times when it was certainly not something I wanted to do. But I was there. I did it. I got drunk, and I was hanging around with the wrong people.”

Kim tore the anterior cruciate ligament in one knee at the 2001 national team trials at the OTC and stopped competing soon after.

Now 27, Kim moved to Dallas, where she said she worked at several restaurants and a Starbucks coffee shop. She declined to discuss her job as a waitress at The Men’s Club, a strip club in Dallas.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0256 or brian.gomez@gazette.com