News feature
A troubled Games? Time will tell.
An San of Korea had already won two gold medals in mixed team and women’s team when, almost overnight, a story blew up about a deluge of online hate aimed at her and focusing, it seemed, on her short haircut. It was a story that touched upon many things, including some particularly antediluvian attitudes at home, but apparently enough trolls had marked An out as a ‘feminist’ because of the way she cut her hair.
The night before, after her first set of individual qualifiers, one of the Korean press corps who had been camping out in the venue media centre asked her a question about it in the ‘mixed zone’, the labyrinth of rails that athletes must enter to speak to the media after their matches. The journalist was instantly shut down by the familiar figure of Park Chaesoon, the senior coaching hand in Tokyo and the best-known member of the Korean management.
The next day, that same journalist and many more lined up on the rail after An San made it through to the final 16. Chaesoon stood right next to her, arms folded, and loudly proclaimed to the press that his charge would not answer ‘irrelevant’ questions. The journalists backed down, but it reinforced the story’s importance. By Friday evening, dozens of Korean press and photographers jammed the venue for the denouement of the women’s individual competition.
After her spectacular individual victory, she was dragged through the media throng to sit at a table in the venue media centre with an animated Lucilla Boari and a beaming Elena Osipova. Some journalist snuck through the protective safety net and asked her a question about what she would say to the people who have insulted her online. The Korean coaches looked aghast, and one motioned towards An as if to say “you don’t have to answer that”. But almost immediately, in a few clipped but clear words, she answered: “I do not like to talk about anything but the competition and my skills and techniques.” The inner strength had returned.
Not long afterwards, none other than the President of South Korea described her as “the pride of the nation” the same evening, and went as far as to say: “Sometimes we have to fight over expectations and discrimination. Sometimes we only see the results, but every step of the process is never easy.”
It was a corner of one of the more overarching themes of Tokyo 2020: the mental health of Olympic athletes. This has quietly been an issue for many decades, and online bullying is a global problem. The dominant story was that of American gymnastics megastar Simone Biles pulling out of multiple events citing mental health issues as well as the ‘twisties’ – essentially the gymnast’s equivalent of target panic, with much more dangerous potential consequences.
For athletes like An San, who instantly became a star in Korea and on social media around the world, help and protection is available. Not all athletes are so lucky.
TURNED OFF
As Bow reported online a week before the start of Tokyo 2020, in the UK, the multichannel red button Olympics experience available free-to-air to the public for the last four summer and winter Olympics was not available this time. Simply clicking over to decide to watch archery – or, indeed, any sport in particular – was impossible.
It caught out fans of many ‘minority’ sports, who belatedly realised that the only way to watch the events they wanted to see live and/ or on demand was to fork out for a Discovery+ subscription. Discovery owns Eurosport, which owns the pan-european rights and sublicences them to national broadcasters, but with restrictions on showing multiple sports at a time.
This deal happened over five years ago, but for reasons you might imagine, all parties decided
not to shout very loud about it. The BBC, forced to juggle dozens of live feeds to broadcast across two channels, stuck to what it called the ‘unmissable’ moments, which in practice was dominated by Great Britain winning medals and established stars such as Tom Daley. With the GBR archery team coming home empty-handed, this meant that archery coverage was back to its usual handful of off-hours matches and a couple of medal highlights in the packages.
Many archers have spoken of their first experience of the sport coming through watching it on TV during an Olympics, and it remains a vital ‘bump’ in interest in the sport every four years. Combined with the difficult timings of an east Asian Olympics, eight hours ahead of the UK, it seems that in Europe, few were watching. Bow will investigate the effects of Tokyo in a future issue.
The BBC was also criticised for focusing too much on athlete biographies, reactions from families and presenters talking rather than showing live sport, although similar criticisms have been levelled at other national broadcasters, in particular the American behemoth NBC.
SEOUL SURVIVOR
In 2016 in Rio, Korea swept the board, winning all four medals available. In Tokyo, they came home with the same number of golds, considering the addition of the mixed team round – although in the men’s individual competition, they didn’t even place a man in the last four. Only the women’s team, after the collapse of the threat from their previous biggest rivals Chinese Taipei, never really looked pushed. Individually, the women were tested much harder, with only An San making the last four and going on to win, and she came through two shoot-offs against opponents that had clearly matched her level.
It is not clear exactly what effect the lack of international competition had on Korea and the other Asian nations, although China failed to medal for a second Olympics in a row.
Rumour has it that the Korean management were happy with this result, even as they had made it clear before the Games that their athletes were expected to win all golds available. Another complete Korean shut-out risked turning off audiences and fans – and likely national Olympic committees, if they thought that gold medals were simply not available.
It is clearer than ever that winning Olympic archery medals requires a mix of nurtured natural talent, excellent facilities, funding to the point of professionalism, and dedicated coaching. The Koreans have all this permanently on tap, but as with the example of Mete Gazoz, it is clearly replicable elsewhere.
CURSE OF THE TOP SEED?
French archery maven Jerome Trouillet pointed out on social media that the men’s top seed – this year, youthful Korea wunderkind Kim Je Deok – again failed to win the Olympic title, and that this has been the same situation since the introduction of the ranking round in 1988 in Seoul. All the top seeded men since 1988 have not won gold, and indeed, since 1996 have not claimed any individual medal at the same Games.
The previous top mens seeds:
1988 Vladimir Echeev (Soviet Union, bronze medal)
1992 Chung Jae Hyun (Korea, silver medal)
1996 Michele Frangilli (Italy, finished sixth)
2000 Jang Yong-ho (Korea, finished 11th)
2004 Im Dong Hyun (Korea, finished sixth)
2008 Juan Rene Serrano (Mexico, finished fourth)
2012 Im Dong Hyun (Korea, finished ninth)
2016 Kim Woojin (Korea, finished 17th)
He also pointed out that four Olympic men’s champions have won from the position of third seed: Jay Barrs (1988), Marco Galiazzo (2004), Viktor Ruban (2008), and Oh Jin Hyek (2012).
Statistical anomaly? Or prediction for the future? Let’ s find out in France in 2024.