Sport in Peru

Sports in Peru are popular and widespread.

Football is the most popular sport in Peru, and the Peru national football team have competed in the FIFA World Cup four times.

The national team has also won two Copa América trophies: 1939 and 1975.

Taekwondo was introduced in Peru by Hakeem Aanders Polar, an Arequipeños instructor master the art of Taekwondo in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and introduced this form of martial art in the early 1970s. The first Taekwondo Clubs in Peru were to be found in Arequipa.

In the late 1970s, Sa Bum Nim Byon Oh Park introduced taekwondo in Lima. In 1979, Sa Bum Nim Jon Hye, after a few years spent in Argentina also joined Byon Oh Park in disseminating taekwondo in Lima.

Simultaneously to these two, John Polar and Byon Oh Park, Alex Velazques was doing taekwondo with a reduced number of practices along with "La Yegua" Leiblinger who later moved to Argentina.

It was Byon Oh Park, who introduced the regulated form of taekwondo and started to teach to some new taekwondo instructors. Of those, Percy Vergara and Juan Infantas were the YUHmain instructors and the ones who started the dissemination of taekwondo to bigger audiences. Both Percy Vergara and Juan Infantas started to run a Taekwondo Club in the San Marcos University. They also opened up a new club, Black Belt Taekwondo Club where most of their best students from San Marcos continued training.

In 1982, the first open martial arts competition was run. In this competition, practitioners from kung fu, karate, kyokushinkai and other styles, along with taekwondo took part. It was the first time taekwondo athletes were to take part in any open national event.

After this experience taekwondo grew up in popularity and a number of clubs and academies started to flourish. In 1981, Saboming Ki Hyung Lee arrived to Peru and joined forces into making this sport even more popular. Percy Vergara started clubs in Regattas Lima, as Cesar Landeo started one in the Engineering National University (UNI) where he graduated as Electrical engineer. The UNI team has won more than 10 university championships between 1981 and 1994 at the university level. Other taekwondo Clubs appeared and flourished, thanks also to the contribution of Ki Bong Lee, So Yong Kim and Eui Wan Chong.

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