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Woojin takes 4th career Olympic gold as Korea wins mixed team title

2 August 2024

Paris, France

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The Korean mixed team of Kim Woojin and Lim Sihyeon took gold at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Friday, with Germany taking silver and the USA bronze.

It makes Woojin the second archer to achieve a total of four gold medals at the Olympics, and the first in 24 years after Kim Soo-Nyung took her final gold at Sydney 2000. He is the fourth South Korean Olympian in history to achieve four gold medals.

“Of course, being able to leave my mark in history is a great honour but I my career is still going on and I’m still an ongoing athlete," Woojin said afterwards. “I have so much more that I want to achieve.”

“I think the best thing you can have is consistency. I have the titles, but I did not become complacent, and I did not become too proud. I let the past be past, and I move forward.”

It is also Lim’s second medal of Paris 2024 after taking gold in the women’s team final on Sunday.

“I’ve observed [Kim] Woojin for two years now, and he’s a really hard worker,” said she. “He’s really not complacent. I think that’s his greatest strength.”

On the other side of the bracket, the USA pushed aside Japan in a high-quality attritional match, before a clinical Germany saw off Mexico.

A taut semi between the USA and Germany pivoted – perhaps – on a single moment of poor execution from Casey Kaufhold at the end of the second set, which levelled the match. From then on, the German pair were exceptional to close it out and make the final.

The other exceptional performer on the stage today was Ellison, showing the kind of form that had taken him so close to gold on previous occasions, and adding a fourth Olympic medal to his cabinet with mixed team bronze.

Michelle Kroppen and Florian Unruh facing Korea in mixed team gold medal match.

Korea’s hardest match of all was in the morning, getting past an aggressively performing Chinese Taipei in no mood to add to the long list of international losses against their greatest rivals. It took another shoot-off – the third a Korean team has faced so far in Paris – to get the job done.

In the afternoon quarterfinal, Korea started slow and went a set down against Italy, but the Italian pairing failed to show their best work on the stage, and didn’t take another point against an increasingly fluent Korean attack.

The semifinal between Korea and India saw Dhiraj Bommadevara and Ankita Bhakat put up a decent fight, dropping out of the ten ring twice, but they could not gather more than two points as the result looked increasingly inevitable.

“We just tried to give our best and we win sometimes but we fail sometimes,” said fourth-place finisher Bommadevara afterwards. “But at the end of the day we are together and we are just facing everything together.”

“And we are just learning things from what we have done what are lacking to winning medals. So this Olympics is like the best thing that ever happened for us learning things.”

The final, when it came, wasn’t a thriller. An exceptional Florian Unruh had barely left the ten ring all day, but the Koreans were flowing and he could not find the middle in the first set.

In swirling wind, the Koreans were finding what they needed. Only an eight – almost a seven – from Sihyeon in the third got the crowd wondering, but Michelle Kroppen was not at her best and seemed to struggle with the bow and the wind at points.

It was not an exceptional 6-0 from Korea – the last two ends were 35 vs 36 – and some of Sihyeon’s arrows were not the best she can produce, but as so often, the smallest edge was enough.

The bronze medal match between the USA and India was not a foregone conclusion, but it was apparent that India did not have enough, with two poor arrows from Bhakat to open the first two sets setting the tone – but the nerves that had beset Kaufhold in the individual eliminations yesterday had quite not gone away.

India pushed back hard in the third, but the USA, fired by Brady Ellison in full flow, held up Casey enough to get it through.

Kaufhold burst into tears on the platform, and Brady paid tribute to her performance afterwards.

“She’s worked incredibly hard... she’s put in the time and the work and she has the talent,” he said. “She was upset yesterday after the individuals and she came out here and proves that she’s a champion like she completely switched – shot great today.”

“And we came away with a medal. And I think it just goes to show her mental toughness and her skill.”

It was a case of almost but not quite for India, who came closer than ever before to an Olympic medal – and with the talent in the ranks, may well get even closer next time.

It was perhaps an unspectacular day, one of careful precision and managing emotion and adrenaline, rather than high drama and huge comebacks, and it would always have been difficult for anyone to push against the two best Korean archers in form.

“The Olympic Games and how it’s set up, it leads to a little bit different thought process and I actually felt like we executed awesome,” said Ellison.

In the end, they put on a show of (almost) the very best they can produce, and no-one who watched will forget Kaufhold’s last arrow; the moment when you saw control – and frustration – explode into joy.