Brady calls long-time rival Woojin “old school” and “talented”

Brady Ellison and Kim Woojin are the two most consistent – if not the most talented – recurve archers of the last decade or more.

The former has five Hyundai Archery World Cup trophies and one win at the world championships while the latter collected his third World Archery Champion crown in 2021 and his fourth tour title last month in Tlaxcala.

There’s respect between the pair.

“Kim’s an old-school archer who believes in consistency over making mistakes,” says Ellison, who goes on to explain that the set system match format introduced in 2009 has led to a riskier mindset.

“Most people train and tune bows to shoot 10s and believe it’s okay to have big mistakes now.”

“He trains and tunes so that there are no mistakes.”

At the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final last month in Mexico, Kim Woojin was sublime. He shot a perfect opening match, dropped one of 12 arrows out of the 10-ring in his second and cruised to the title in his third.

“I don’t think it’s a big secret. The set system just changed the thinking of the generation of archers that have only shot that,” explains Ellison.

“Kim started back in the days of score and mistakes were bad.“

While selections for the Korean team now revolve around the international-standard 70-metre round, many of the nation’s domestic competitions still focus on the four-distance 144-arrow format, which sees recurve men shoot 90, 70, 50 and 30 metres.

“It’s just a different mindset,” says Brady.

“And he’s talented.”