Im Dong Hyun climbs podium three times in return to international competition
Leading the recurve men’s qualification round with a total of 688 points, Im Dong Hyun cruised to three gold medal matches at Medellin 2015: Men’s team, mixed team and individual.
In a replay of one of the London 2012 recurve men’s team semifinal match, Im – with teammates Lee Woo Seuk and Shin Jae Hun – beat the USA in straight sets to celebrate a first gold of Medellin recurve finals day.
His next challenge: A mixed team final, paired with Lee Tuk Young, against China. Wu Jiaxin and Xing Yu couldn’t keep pace, and Korea won the match, 5-1.
Im would face Xing for a second time in the individual final.
The Korean athlete started strong in sunny Medellin: 29 points for his first set to go 2-0 up. It would be a score he repeated in the second, but with one big difference: Xing shot the same score.
Xing tied the match at 3-3 after the third set, then won the fourth to lead, 5-3.
In the fifth and last set, Im and Xing matched each other with their first two arrows: 10-9. Im finished with a nine, a solid 28 pointer, though a slight shake of the head as he left the line suggested that the Korean athlete wasn’t all too impressed with how he closed out.
Xing Yu needed just a nine to win.
His last arrow was a nine – but only just. The arrow landed five o’clock in the gold, the shaft touching the black line separating it from the red on the inner side.
A moment of reflection from Im, staring at the spectator screen – while Xing Yu celebrated his Medellin 2015 gold medal.
Not the perfect finish the Korean team, and Im, would have hoped for, but a dominant return to the international competition field nonetheless. The last time Im wore a Korean shirt abroad was at the worlds in Belek in 2013. Two years later: two golds and a silver in Colombia.
Korea also had two medals in the recurve women’s competition.
International debutant Hong Sunam beat teammate Lee Tuk Young to her first international gold. The match, said Hong, was easy as she has known Lee for than 15 years: “Lee is like my sister. We went to junior school together.”
The Korean women – Hong, Lee and Jeon Sungeun – lost in the team final earlier in the day in Medellin.
“I was angry to lose the team gold,” admitted Sunam. “We really wanted to win, it was just a shame we had some bad ends that didn’t help us at all.”
With no compound representation in Medellin, Korea finished its last Archery World Cup stage of 2015 with three gold’s, three silvers – and four of its primary team athletes qualified for the Archery World Cup Final in Mexico City.
