Korean archery, a tale of dominance like no other
South Korean archers clinched gold in the Olympics men’s team event on Monday — again — extending their reign, and winning the country’s third archery gold at the Tokyo Games. This was the men’s team’s sixth Olympics gold since team events were introduced in 1988. Kim Je-deok, 17, already a South Korean television talent show star as an archery genius, was the heart and soul of this team, egging on his seniors Kim Woojin, 29, and Oh Jin-hyek, 39, throughout their golden run.
They beat India in the quarters, Japan in the semis, and Chinese Taipei in the final.
In every match, the Koreans found something special to pull out of the bag. In the quarters, India shot a 54 (out of a possible 60) in the first set in reply to Korea’s opening of 59. In the second set, Tarundeep Rai, Pravin Jadhav and Atanu Das shot a 57, and it brought smiles to their faces. Korea hit 59 again.
During the semi-final tiebreaker against hosts
Japan, chasing 28 out of a possible 30, Kim
Je-deok needed to hit a 10 to keep South
Korea in the match.
He hit the bullseye.
In the final, Chinese Taipei shot 58 in the second set. South
Korea replied with a perfect 60. Over the years, South Korea have made it a habit of pulling out the right shot at exactly the right time, crushing opponents just when they felt they had a chance.
On Sunday, the South Korean women bagged their ninth consecutive team gold in Olympics. In fact, the women’s team is yet
NEW DELHI:
to lose a single match at the Games since Seoul 1988 — dominance that beat all other stories of invincibility at the Olympics.
South Korean coach Lim Chae Woong had a couple of stints with the Indian team between 2000-2010. Throughout his tenures, he said India did not have a big enough pool of archers to build a world beating team. According to Rathin Dutta, a former World Archery official, Koreans are introduced to archery at the primary school level. According to Dutta, in 2012, before the London Games, there were 33 corporate archery teams in Korea. And Korea’s elite pool of archers was around 150-strong. At the time, India’s pool including men and women was 16.
Another Korean coach, Moon Baek-woon, who was recruited by the Mittal Champions’ Trust before the London Games, had said South Korea built a replica of the Beijing Games venue for its archers to train over a year before the competition. India, in contrast, had not sealed Olympic qualification berths till a couple of months before the Games.
In the lead up to Tokyo, the Korean archers again got to practice in range that was a replica of the Tokyo venue.
The other aspect both Lim and Woon stressed on was mental conditioning. Dr Kim Youngsook of the Korean Institute of Sports Science, who is the team’s mental conditioning coach since 2012, told World Archery: “In other sports, sports psychology is typically only about 20 to 30% of performance. In archery, it’s probably closer to 80%. The real deciding factor of performance in archery is an archer’s mental strength and confidence.”
Koreans archers and coaches are secretive about what they really do to improve mental strength. According to Lim, activities such as bungee-jumping, and practice sessions on the sidelines of packed baseball stadiums, were often used to enhance the archers’ concentration, and to overcome fear.
Whatever they do, it works.