Kim Woojin became World Archery Champion for a second time in Copenhagen in 2015 and then, later on that year, he won the Aquece Rio Olympic test event in the city’s iconic Sambodromo.
Ever since, he hasn’t been shy about his personal expectations for the Games.
In Medellin, he led the recurve men’s qualification round with 695 points, just four below the current world record, held by his fellow compatriotIm Dong Hyun.
“I was a nervous about beating the world record,” said Woojin, grinning. “But you know, qualification is always practice for me. Elimination is when we are really talking about business.”
Kim was the only man not to drop an arrow out of the gold rings thoughout the entire competition.
He was followed by the USA’s Brady Ellison and teammates Ku Bonchan and Lee Seungyun with 687, 685 and 679, respectively.
“I’m currently not focusing in anything else other than my preparation for the Olympics. I will beat Im’s record in Rio this year,” exclaimed Woojin while looking at his teammates, who both seemed to agree!
“He’ll make it,” said Bonchan.
As a team, Korea was first seeded with an accumulative score of 2059 points. The men in white will first meet team Switzerland during eliminations on Friday.
“We are looking forward to do well as team here in Medellin,” said Lee, who won the worlds in between Woojin’s two, in 2013. “We feel good individually and together we can do even better.”
Medellin’s local Olympian Daniel Pineda was sixth with 675 points – a result that brought back confidence after Shanghai, where his results weren’t quite the ones he expected.
“Personally I’m happy with the result,” said Daniel on his Medellin qualifying performance. “It could have been better as I had one bad end that lowered my total score. This proves that work is paying off and, of course, being at home helps a lot. We are used to the venue, the weather and the people. This is where we train.”
Chinese Taipei’s Tan Ya-ting led the recurve women’s qualification with 680 points, followed by the Korean trio of Choi Misun, Chang Hye Jin and Olympic Champion Ki Bo Bae.
Misun led most of the way, and was three points better than the pace required to beat Ki Bo Bae’s recurve women’s ranking round world record at halfway. She couldn’t maintain the level during the back straight and surrendered pole to Tan.
