Olympic contenders: Mete Gazoz | 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.

Aged 17, after losing in the second round at the Rio 2016 Olympics, Mete Gazoz declared to a journalist in the mixed zone and then again on Twitter (now X)…

“I will work harder and return to win a gold medal in Tokyo in 2020.”

Plenty of talented athletes have made big Olympic plans and bold statements. Most have failed. But he didn’t. Now, three years on, Gazoz is the reigning Olympic, World and European Champion. He is the first archer ever to hold those three titles at the same time.

And he’s back at the Olympics for more.

Quick stats

• Name: Mete Gazoz, Türkiye
• Age: 25
• World ranking: 4
• Olympic caps: 2 ( Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games)
• Instagram: @metegazoz

Why it might happen

The extraordinary journey of Mete Gazoz from a rail-thin Turkish teenager to the very-highest pinnacle of the sport in Tokyo seems strange and impossible.

But then ‘Gazoz’ translates as ’surprise’…

…or ‘soda’. As in the drink.

(He’s done well, financially, over the last 36-ish months.)

Nobody in the history of Olympic archery has ever defended an Olympic title but Mete, now 25, is committed to doing just that. But he’s sensibly reframed it.

“I don’t have the goal of defending the Olympic title right now. Not again in Paris. In Paris, I’m preparing to be the first Olympic Champion for the first time and I’m doing it that way,” he said after his win at the European Championships in Essen earlier this year.

“It is much, much easier to try and win the title from scratch than to protect the title. This is how I prepare myself, prepare myself psychologically.”

“In the end, I will be champion.”

Argue with that.

Why it might not

Mete has this uncanny ability to win the big events.

First the Olympics in 2021, then the worlds in 2023, then the Europeans in 2024. His record on the Hyundai Archery World Cup, in the meantime, has been mediocre – irrelevant, really, given the slew of major trophies, but is it sustainable?

Mete’s whole Game rests on peaking at the right time.

If he’s got it right – possible. Wrong? Disaster.

And the task ahead – defending an Olympic individual title – has eluded every one of the greatest archery Olympians over more than a century. Only Darrell Pace (USA) has ever won more than once, in 1976 and 1984.

Ultimately, Mete is a showman who thrives on the big stage. He’s also a big star now in his native country, just one of just two Turkish gold medallists in Tokyo.

“I meet people on the streets, and they say things like, ‘After seeing you, we started archery,’ or ‘We got our child into archery,” he said recently.

His long-time coach Goktug Ergin would probably agree that the biggest issue is keeping Mete grounded, and focused, until he wins again.
 

Did you know? 

Not only has no archer – male or female – ever defended a title, only four men have ever collected more than one individual medal in archery in the post-1972 Olympic era.

These are Darrell Pace, Giancarlo Ferrari, Hiroshi Yamamoto, and Takaharu Furukawa, who took individual and team bronze at Tokyo 2020, after winning individual silver at London 2012.

Furukawa was also the first Japanese athlete to collect multiple medals in archery at a single Olympic Games, and only the second Japanese archer ever (after Yamamoto) to gain multiple medals of any kind.

Will Mete Gazoz be added to that list? We’ll find out very soon.