The year he turned 18, in his third year of high school, he was picked by Professor Kang Kwang-bae of Korea National Sport University and took up skeleton, and three months later he was named to the national team. In 2013, he won bronze and silver at the America’s Cup, his first international medals.
In 2014, he went to the Sochi Winter Olympics and finished 16th, the best result by a Korean athlete, and later that year he won his first World Cup medal, a bronze. In 2015, he finished 8th at his first World Championships, again a best by a Korean athlete.
In February 2016, he won gold at the World Cup in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the first for a Korean skeleton athlete, and the same month he finished tied for 2nd at the World Championships, the first Asian athlete to do so. In December he won gold again in the first World Cup race of the new season. In the 2017–18 season, he won three straight World Cup golds and rose to world No. 1.
The breakthrough yearHe went into the Olympics in late January 2018 ranked world No. 1. On Feb. 16, 2018, the year he turned 24, he won gold in skeleton at the Pyeongchang Olympics, the first Olympic gold in sliding sports for Korea and for Asia. He wore a helmet modeled on the film Iron Man, and got his nickname from it. The gold made him eligible for the military service benefit, and in May he won the most valuable player award at the Sogang Sports Awards.
In 2019, he won bronze at the World Championships. In 2020, he finished only 6th at the World Championships and missed out on a grand slam of the Olympics, World Cup and World Championships.
In 2021, he won silver at a World Cup, his first event in 11 months. In 2022, he finished 12th at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Because of trademark rules, he could not wear the Iron Man helmet that gave him his nickname. That summer he said he would retire if skeleton stopped coming to mind, and he later wound down his career.
In 2023, he appeared as a contestant on Netflix’s Physical: 100, and in June he showed his daily life living alone on MBC’s I Live Alone. In 2024, he appeared as a coach on MBC and Lifetime’s League of Universities: The Athlete Boys. In 2025, he won Netflix’s Physical: Asia as part of Team Korea. In 2026, he took the skeleton commentary for the first time, on JTBC’s broadcast of the Winter Olympics.
Yun Sung-bin (born May 23, 1994) took up skeleton in 2012, the year he turned 18, in his third year of high school, and became known on Feb 16, 2018, the year he turned 24, when he won the first Olympic skeleton gold for Asia at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. His last Olympics was Beijing in 2022, the year he turned 28.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.