Around sunrise each morning in Milan, a pack of sprightly hopefuls has fallen into formation for one of the more grueling activities around these Winter Olympics.
The venue has been a hotel near the city center, the field of play a patch of sidewalk outside its revolving doors.
The contest has lasted hours, with one objective: catching a glimpse of Sunghoon, a K-pop singer in town for the Games.
“They never do concerts here,” said Maressa Pacheco, a longtime fan of his group, Enhypen. “So it’s our only chance to see him.”
Cross-country skiing, it turns out, is not the only endurance sport taking place this month in northern Italy.
One chilly afternoon this week, Ms. Pacheco, 24, a mail carrier from Milan, was rocking softly on her heels and flexing her legs outside the hotel. She had been standing since morning. She acknowledged feeling some fatigue — “a bit tired, a bit hungry” — and let out a deep breath.
A couple dozen people stood nearby, part of a rotating cast of fans that has gathered there practically all day, every day since last week, when Sunghoon arrived as an honorary Olympic torch bearer and an ambassador for the South Korean team.
Every Olympics has a galaxy of celebrities popping up around the host city, each bringing their own gravitational pull, but this level of commitment felt rare.
The crowd for Sunghoon has sprouted up around 7 a.m., arranging itself into neat parallel lines beside the hotel doors. Some have stayed until after midnight.
For these fans, simply being there as Sunghoon walked by was an achievement roughly analogous to winning a bronze medal. Snagging an autograph was like securing silver. And snapping a selfie — an outcome possible only with the total alignment of the stars — felt as rare as winning gold.
Beatrice Tanzini, 34, an accountant from Milan, was one of the fortunate ones, receiving an autograph from Sunghoon on Friday afternoon. Seemingly unsatisfied, she spent another six hours outside the hotel on Saturday.
“It’s cold these days, raining some days, so it was hard,” Ms. Tanzini said. “But he’s so kind with people, with the fans, so it’s worth it to wait so long.”
Before becoming a K-pop sensation with Enhypen, a seven-member group with more than 21 million followers on Instagram, Sunghoon spent a decade training as a figure skater. His fans still call him “Ice Prince.” He has drawn crowds in Milan wherever he has roamed, including the Olympic media center, where a group of young volunteers on Sunday watched, mouths agape, as he conducted a brief news conference.
“In both sports and music, I think we exist only with the support of fans,” Sunghoon said in Korean. “I always want my fans to be happy when they see me.”
Seeing him, though, can be an Olympian task.
So the fans need a game plan. They trade notes online and glean Sunghoon’s public schedule from social media and Korean news reports. They need proper gear, including merchandise, cameras and foldable stools. And there are hours of unseen work; Ms. Pacheco, who speaks Portuguese, Italian and English, is taking Korean lessons.
Ms. Pacheco said fans could sometimes be ruthless with each other, hoarding information about stars’ whereabouts during Milan Fashion Week, another event that now regularly draws K-pop singers. She also struggled with the perception from some that she was stalking these stars.
“I’m very respectful, never going over the limit,” she said. “I always keep my distance.”
The atmosphere on the sidewalk this week has indeed been collegial. Siyu Mao, 19, a design student in Turin, Italy, who is originally from Shanghai, was delighted when another fan gave her a picture of Sunghoon for a potential autograph after noticing she had brought only a blank slip of paper.
That afternoon, around 1, the fans grew suddenly quiet. A large man, easily recognizable as Sunghoon’s bodyguard, was peering through the door. They tightened their grips on their cellphones — the fan’s version of an athlete’s ready position.
Soon afterward, a couple from Britain, Chris and Claire Marwood, stutter-stepped out of the hotel, taken aback by the young people looking expectantly in their direction. Mr. Marwood, 64, recovered and snapped into character, straightening his back and waving to the group.
“I haven’t a clue what this is about,” he said. “I thought they were taking a photo of me, a gray-haired Englishman, and I didn’t know why.”
Then, half an hour later, it was game time: Sunghoon was leaving to watch some events.
Out he floated through the revolving doors. The fans, holding formation in straight columns, waved and snapped photos and held out Enhypen paraphernalia.
He waved back and smiled — but never broke his stride toward the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter awaiting near the curb.
The adrenaline was palpable as the car drifted away. But there was a sense of deflation, too. They had waited so long. It had happened so fast. Now it was over.
On the sidewalk was S.M. Kim, 28, who had taken time off from work in Seoul to visit Milan. I asked whether she had traveled here to watch the Olympics.
“I came to watch Sunghoon,” she said.
Yet here she was with some newly free time. It would be hours before Sunghoon might reasonably return. Perhaps, she said, she could go watch some speedskating.
Andrew Keh covers New York City and the surrounding region for The Times.
The post An Olympian Quest in Milan: Glimpsing a K-Pop Superstar appeared first on New York Times.
