AAPI Month: Andrew Heo and Brandon Kim Talk About Inspiration And Inspiring Others

Of the 20 Olympic medals won by Team USA short track speed skaters to date, Apolo Anton Ohno and J.R. Celski own over half of them. These two Asian American icons helped bring awareness to the sport and inspire others to follow them.

With the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 rapidly approaching, Andrew Heo and Brandon Kim are two leading candidates to compete at those Games. Heo is a 2022 Olympian and both men were on the 5000-meter relay team that finished fourth at the most recent world championship.

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Team USA talked to both Korean Americans about who inspired them to first try short track speed skating and how they now hope to inspire others.

Here is a look at their journeys.

Andrew Heo, 24, grew up in Warrington, Pennsylvania — about an hour north of Philadelphia — and first learned about short track speed skating through his Maryland-based cousins. Kim Dong-sung, an Olympic and world champion short track speed skater from Korea, was coaching in Maryland, and the cousins wanted to try the sport. So did Heo’s older brother, Aaron.

As for Heo, “I was actually the last person to want to touch this sport,” he says. “I just didn’t want to be a part of it.”

Heo was seven or eight years old at the time and preferred to “eat junk food and play video games,” he jokes. But his mom couldn’t leave him alone. So, she brought him to practice with Aaron. To keep young Andrew occupied, she bought him roller blades.

The coach saw Heo rollerblading and told him several times, “You should skate, you have talent.”

Heo said no several times, but his parents became convinced that he should give it a try. So, he did, and while he was not immediately hooked, he kept at it.

Brandon Kim’s first foray into short track was the opposite of Heo’s. Kim, now 23, watched short track on TV during the Olympic Winter Games Vancouver 2010 and was inspired by how fast the short track speed skaters were going around the rink. He was also inspired by the Korean Olympians who were doing well at those Games. They medaled in every event, with Lee Jung-Su taking gold in the 1000 and 1500.

Kim found a club near his home in Fairfax, Virginia, and gave short track a try the following season. Only 9 years old at the time, he was “really bad.”

“I was, like, terrible,” admits Kim with a smile. “The coach gave me a bucket to push around so I would stop falling. … But I must have liked it because I’m still here!”

Kim kept at it and was soon training three to four times a week through middle school. Soon, he was setting age group records.

But when he started high school, most of Kim’s friends thought he would quit. He was matriculating at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, a rigorous magnet school. Just getting to the rink often took one to two hours with traffic.

But during his freshman year, Kim won junior trials and a chance to compete internationally. He decided to stick with it.

“Training in high school was pretty difficult to balance,” he admits. “The magnet school was very demanding, and I had a pretty rigorous academic load. I had to fit in practice, homework, going to school.”

Kim stuck with it, training during the summer in Utah, and proved successful both academically and athletically. He looked up to 2018 U.S. Olympian Thomas Hong, also a Korean American, who skated for the same club as Kim in Maryland. The two still talk, with Hong often giving Kim advice.

In 2018, Kim graduated from high school and went to Stanford University, where he’s a pre-med majoring in computer science. To train in short track speed skating, Heo had an even bigger challenge to overcome than Kim’s — he lived over three hours from the rink. But he and his brother Aaron still made it to practice four times a week.

Every Thursday, their mom, Hye-yong Kim, would pick them up early from school. They would drive into Philadelphia and pick up their dad, Deuk Jin Heo, who owns an auto repair shop.

“He would sacrifice and end his work day early so he could drive us down [to Maryland] and make it in time for practice,” says Heo.

En route, the Heo brothers did their homework.

After practice, the Heos drove three hours home so the boys could attend school on Friday.

“We would get home at midnight or 1 a.m., and my brother and I would be sleeping in the car,” remembers Heo. “My dad would carry both of us up to bed.”

Then Friday afternoon, the Heo brothers returned to the Maryland rink, this time with mom driving. They then spent the weekend at their cousins’ house so they could continue training on Saturday and Sunday. Their dad would take the train down on Saturday after work, then drive the family home again on Sunday after morning practice and church.

“When I made the Olympic team, my dad said, ‘All the hard times, all the struggles, just went away,’” says Heo.

In 2016, after Aaron competed in the Youth Olympic Games, Heo wanted to follow in his brother’s tracks, so asked if he could join US Speedskating’s Facilitated Athlete Sport Training (FAST) development program that summer. If he improved during that time, his parents agreed that he could stay in Utah.

Heo improved quickly. So in the fall, his mother moved to Utah. They lived in an apartment in Salt Lake City, and Heo enrolled at Skyline High School.

A year later, he qualified for his first junior world championships, taking fifth in the 3000m relay. By the 2019/2020 season, Heo qualified to compete in the ISU World Tour (world cup) competitions.

Kim had an even more meteoric rise in short track speed skating. At the 2016/2017 world junior short track speed skating championships, he helped Team USA win a bronze medal in the 3000m relay. He was a junior in high school.

Kim was a student at Stanford when the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 rolled around. But despite limited training — he only has an opportunity to lift weights, ride a stationary bike (and bike around campus), run, and do other speed skating specific exercises — Kim was a strong candidate to make the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team. He had swept the U.S. championships in the 500, 1000, and 1500, and had been improving at World Cups.

But he had bad luck at Olympic Trials and in the final race, fell. Heo instead earned the Olympic berth.

For Heo, qualifying for the Beijing Winter Games was a dream come true for both him and his family. He had gone into the year rooted in his faith; if he made the 2022 Olympic Team, then it was meant to be. If he didn’t make it, then that was God’s plan as well.

That fall, he struggled in the world cups leading up to Olympic Trials and was homesick. He called his mom from Japan and told her that he wanted to come home, that there was no way he would make it to the upcoming Olympic Games if he continued skating like he was. But he wanted no regrets from Trials and upped his game, earning a spot in the final race.

In Beijing, he finished seventh and earned a shot of confidence.

“My Olympics in Beijing made me want to keep doing it and hopefully go for the medal next time,” he said at the time.

Since the Beijing Winter Games, Heo’s resume has been filled with medals. He’s claimed four medals at Four Continents Competitions — two in the mixed relay and two in the 500. And in 2024, he helped Team USA win a world championship bronze medal in the mixed relay.

At the most recent world championships in March, Kim and Heo helped bring Team USA to fourth in the 5000m relay. The U.S. men last won an Olympic medal in the 5000m relay at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

Heo calls these medals “stepping stones.” The mixed relay medals in particular “tell the other teams that we’re coming, we’re able to get in the mix as well,” he says.

In his Olympic quest, Kim is taking a year off from Stanford to prepare for Milan Cortina 2026 and is training full-time in Utah while also studying for the MCATs. He is on track to graduate from Stanford in 2027 and then plans to attend med school, specializing in perhaps orthopedics (like his dad) or neurosurgery.

At the rink, Kim has won three world cup medals in the mixed relay each of the past three seasons. During the 2024/2025 season, he made several world cup finals and in December, took a career-best fifth in the 500 in the ISU World Tour Seoul (after falling in the final).

On paper, Kim’s success looks surprising, given his focus on academics. At Stanford, he cannot access the university’s athletic facilities “because technically, I’m not a student-athlete,” he explains. Nor does he have access to a rink when he’s at school. Many of the world cups and world championships fall during midterms or finals, so he often competes on three hours of sleep.

“I obviously try very hard at the sport, but I feel like I have a different outlook from the other skaters,” Kim says. “Everything I’m trying to do right now, I don’t know anyone who’s ever done it before, it’s kind of uncharted territory. I’m just skating because I enjoy it.

“If the Olympics comes with that, it’s a big bonus. If it doesn’t, I feel like the pressure is off me.”

Already an Olympian, Heo still hasn’t grasped that he now serves as an inspiration the way he once looked up to Celski and Ohno.

“Getting to know them and talking to them definitely helped me in my career, and I want to do what I can to help the next generation,” he says. “I feel proud knowing I’ve gotten to a point where I’m able to offer advice to others. But it’s also humbling. It keeps me in check.”

Kim wants to inspire others but not in the way one might expect.

“I want to inspire people to continue skating through college,” he says. “Not all colleges have rinks, and definitely none of them have skating as a college sport. The path I’m paving is maybe one that other athletes can follow.”