Olympics-Archery-Invincible South Korea win gold again

By Ju-min Park

TOKYO (Reuters) -South Korea claimed gold in the Olympic archery men’s team event on Monday, extending their reign and winning the country’s third archery gold at the Tokyo Games.

Teenager Kim Je Deok, at his first Olympics, won his second gold medal, helping the South Korean team to beat Taiwan 6-0 in the final.

He took a gold in the mixed-team event on Saturday.

“Before going into the games, I said to myself, let’s not think about medals,” the 17-year-old Kim told reporters.

“Once you get greedy about medals, you have a lot of thoughts in your head, and that will make your body tense.”

Arrows from Kim, Oh Jinhyek and Kim Woojin hit six perfect 10s in the second set of the final.

Kim, who became the youngest South Korean Olympic gold medallist, had already won fame at home for an appearance on a 2016 television talent show as a archery genius.

The South Korean men’s team have now taken gold in the event six times at the Olympics, including in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

In Tokyo, the country has already won three of the archery events, with the women’s team tying for the longest gold streak in Olympic history with nine successive titles.

In the semi-finals, Japan lost in a shoot-off to South Korea, with Kim Je Deok’s arrow being closest to the centre, but the host country won bronze after defeating Netherlands 5-4 in the third-place match.

Earlier, Japan beat the United States 5-1 to get to the semi-finals, leaving world champion Brady Ellison upset at the lost chance of a medal.

“Walking away here without a medal wasn’t even a reality. Kind of like (gymnast) Simone Biles not making the cut and all-around,” Ellison told reporters after his team’s defeat.

Ellison said South Korea had a well-established professional system that was hard to match.

“There, archery is set up like our Major League Baseball, the NFL. So the only way someone is going to be able to beat Korea is to have a team step up and outwork, and no one’s done that,” he said.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Clare Fallon)

Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Archery - Men’s Team - Medal Ceremony - Yumenoshima Archery Field, Tokyo, Japan July 26, 2021. Gold medallist Kim Je Deok of South Korea, gold medallist Kim Woojin of South Korea and gold medallist Oh Jin Hyek of South Korea stand on the podium REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Archery - Men’s Team - Medal Ceremony - Yumenoshima Archery Field, Tokyo, Japan July 26, 2021. Gold medallist Kim Je Deok of South Korea, gold medallist Kim Woojin of South Korea and gold medallist Oh Jin Hyek of South Korea stand on the podium REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Archery - Men’s Team - Medal Ceremony - Yumenoshima Archery Field, Tokyo, Japan July 26, 2021. Gold medallist Kim Je Deok of South Korea, gold medallist Kim Woojin of South Korea and gold medallist Oh Jin Hyek of South Korea stand on the podium with silver medallist, Deng Yu-Cheng of Taiwan, silver medallist Tang Chih-Chun of Taiwan and silver medallist Wei Chun-Heng of Taiwan, and bronze medallist, Takaharu Furukawa of Japan, bronze medallist Yuki Kawata of Japan and bronze medallist Hiroki Muto of Japan REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Archery - Men’s Team - Gold medal match - Yumenoshima Archery Field, Tokyo, Japan - July 26, 2021. Kim Je Deok of South Korea and Kim Woojin of South Korea react REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne