National selection took place in March in Korea. After that first event in the region of Donghae, 32 archers were invited to form the country’s international archery squad for 2015.
Youth Olympic Champion Lee Woo Seok was impressive throughout the Donghae event: the 17 year old – who’s only outing in a Korea shirt to date was Nanjing – outperformed many of his veteran peers.
The full squad competes over two further selection events to choose the primary team and reserve athletes for international tournaments.
Each nation can send up to four athletes in each division to Archery World Cup events, but at the World Archery Championships the maximum is set at three.
With Copenhagen 2015 acting as the main team qualifier for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, all three athletes a nation sends need to perform well to secure those valuable quota spots.
Woo Seok’s chances of making his senior team debut look strong after the first of Korea’s two squad selection tournaments. He finished in second in the recurve men’s rankings behind Tokyo 2012 Archery World Cup and 2011 World Archery Champion Kim Woojin.
Woo Seok, though, collected the highest shoot-off modifier out of all eight.
The modifier is a new aspect of the selection system, introduced in Korea for 2015, and designed to test the archers under pressure. Confidence in performance in stressful situations is seen as key to the team’s success in the nation.
Ku Bonchan and reigning world champ Lee Seungyun lay in third and fourth respectively in the recurve men’s leaderboard. Olympic Champion Oh Jin Hyek was off the pace in sixth.
Oh’s female counterpart, current women’s Olympic Champion Ki Bo Bae, may return to the Korean side in 2015.
She did not make the squad last season and spent much of the year working as an archery analyst for Korean television. It’s clear her training regime did not suffer, however.
Fourth at the halfway point, she was behind Chang Hye Jin, Choi Misun and Jeon Sungeun.
Whether Bo Bae makes the final three or four or not, we’ll see another very different – but no less talented – recurve women’s team fielded by Korea this season.
Kim Yong Ho and Kim Yoon Hee led the men’s and women’s compound selections respectively.
Shanghai 2014 Champion Choi Bomin has an uphill climb to make the 2015 team. The world-champion recurve archer turned compound pro finished seventh out of eight.
The second and final Korean team selection tournament for the Copenhagen 2015 World Archery Championships takes place later this month: from 16 to 20 April 2015.
