Paris, France, August 3, 2024: Korea’s Lim Si-hyeon completed a golden hat trick in the archery competition of Paris 2024 at Les Invalides on Saturday.
Having won both the women’s team and mixed team events earlier in the week, the three-time Hangzhou Asian Games champion came out on top of an all-Korea final in the women’s individual competition against teammate Nam Su-hyeon.
“Since last year I’ve been dreaming of this moment. I wanted to put on a performance and a result. I put a lot of effort into doing it. I’m so grateful and happy," said Lim.
When asked about facing her teammate in the final, Lim replied: “It’s not like I was extra nervous because I met my teammate. In the semifinal I played Jeon Hun-young and we were saying, ’One of us will get a medal so it’s OK', instead of thinking of the result I wanted.”
Lim beat Nam 7-3 in the final. The first set was tied 29-29 for 1-1 in points, before Lim won the next two sets 29-26, 30-27 to lead 5-1.
But Nam wasn’t finished and fired three perfect 10s to take fourth set 30-29 to trail 5-3, before Lim sealed gold 28-26 for 7-3.
Lim shot 11 scores of 10 in her 15 arrows, with three 9s and only one 8 in a remarkable display of archery. Nam fired eight 10s but lacked the consistency of Lim and even hit the 7 mark on one occasion.
Korea’s “Gangneung Girl”, who hails from the winter sports city of Gangneung in Gangwon province, has enjoyed an incredible Olympics. She began the archery competition by setting a world record of 694 in the ranking round of 72 arrows and followed this with three gold medals.
An San achieved this golden treble at Tokyo 2020, but such is the strength of the Korean archery team that she did not make the cut this time.