Takaharu Furukawa (Japan)

While the Japanese veteran came away with two bronze medals on home soil – not usually the sign of an underrated outing – his performance still deserves some special attention. He said: “The Tokyo Olympics is special to me. I heard that the year a child is born is a lucky year, and I’m so happy that it was true.” Furukawa’s son was born in 2021.

Archers tend to be most successful at their first or second Olympics. But this was Furukawa’s fifth Games: his first was in 2004 in Athens. In 2012 he took individual silver in London. Aged 36, he was one of the oldest archers on the field when he took both team and individual bronze in Tokyo. His finals matches were gutsy and aggressive, he only lost to the eventual individual champion, Mete Gazoz, and he showed an impressive fifth gear in the final match against Tang Chih-chun.

Only three other archers have collected more than one individual medal in the men’s event: Darrell Pace, Giancarlo Ferrari, and Hiroshi Yamamoto. He is also the first Japanese athlete to collect multiple medals in archery at a single Olympic Games, and he is only the second Japanese archer ever – after Yamamoto – to gain multiple medals of any kind.

Furukawa, the consummate professional, was characteristically unshowy about his achievement afterwards, but it was perhaps just a little more remarkable than it might have looked.