Olympic contenders: Lim Sihyeon | Les Huit à Paris 2024

This article series, Les Huit à Paris, spotlights eight of the biggest contenders for the individual titles at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Asian Games triple gold medallist. World number one for much of 2023. World under-21 record holder for the 70m round. Only the second archer in history to win four of their first five stages of the Hyundai Archery World Cup.

Topped the Korean Olympic trials – the toughest recurve archery tournament in the world – from the first day to the last. Indisputably the best Korean recurve woman of the past two years. But a complete rookie at the Games.

Is Lim Sihyeon guaranteed gold in Paris? History says: most definitely not. 

Quick stats

• Name: Lim Sihyeon, Korea
• Age: 21
• World ranking: 2
• Olympic caps: 0
• Instagram: @s1hyeon._z

Why it might happen

For the second consecutive Olympics, the Korean recurve women’s team are Games rookies.

But this line-up, much more than the previous, feels unprepared. Only one of the three has proven herself on the world stage, Lim, and she’s the only one of the three who might be referred to as a ‘favourite’ heading into Paris. It’s an odd spot for archery‘s leading nation.

Her superlative success in only her sophomore season on the world stage speaks for itself – which is lucky, because it’s difficult to get a handle on the sphinx-like Sihyeon.

She’s not the first reserved (or, perhaps, shy) Korean archer that might win gold at the Games. But after the drama that was An San’s journey to three golds in Tokyo, there are big shoes to fill.

Lim has the ability.

“All athletes dream of going to the Olympics and being selected for the national team. Since I've got the position that everyone wants, I feel I should be take responsibility for it,” she said recently. “Rather than trying to get rid of the burden, I think I should be able to handle this burden because I made it to this spot.”

Sihyeon has a job to do, and she knows it.

That job is not to win individual gold. It’s to lead this new Korean women’s team, putting star-player points on the board rather than any holistic manner, to an historic 10th consecutive Olympic title.

Why it might not

The favourite always wins? Definitely not.

In 2016, Choi Misun was in an eerily similar position arriving in Rio. She was the top Korean woman, winning gold everywhere, breaking world records and the only archer to have a more-winning record to the start of her World Cup career.

It didn’t happen. The pressure was too perhaps much and Chang Hye Jin ended up with gold.

Fast forward to 2020. For much of the Olympic cycle leading up to Tokyo, Kang Chae Young was the top Korean woman and had been the world number one for almost two years. But it was An San who was crowned in Japan.

Lim has seen some spectacular victories, but quite a few early exits too – including, ominously, at the test event in Paris last year. She didn’t deliver at the world championships, either.

The Korean women‘s team has been shocked twice by China in finals in 2024. The aura of invincibility is fading. The era of domination, too?

They are beatable – and the rest of the archery peloton knows it.

Did you know?

Lim’s triple gold medal haul at the Asian Games – the second most important competition for the Korean archery machine after the Olympics – was the first by an archer in 37 years.

Winning this competition gave her (as well as Lee Woo Seok, who took the men’s title) a precious extra 1.6 points in the final Korean Olympic trials.

They were points she didn’t actually need in the uber-high-arrow-volume calculation of who ascends to wear the white shirt, as she was so far ahead of everyone else by the last day, her ticket to Paris was already assured.