South Korea win seventh Gold medal at 2012 Olympics
South Korea has won at the Women's Team competition in every Olympic Games since it was added to the archery schedule in Seoul, South Korea in 1988 and extended that proud tradition at London 2012.
Lee Sung Jin, Ki Bo Bae and Choi Hyeonju defeated Chinese trio of Cheng Ming, Fang Yuting and Xu Jing 210-209 in wet and windy conditions at Lord's.
It is the third time in a row China has finished in the silver medal position behind the Koreans, though none of the archers involved four years ago in Beijing are on duty in London.
The match was decided on the last arrow, when Ki needed at least nine to secure victory and she held her nerve to hit the outer gold.
The bronze medal match was won by Japan, who defeated Russia 209-207 to claim the first women's archery medal in their history. Ren Hayakawa, Miki Kanie and Kaori Kawanaka came all the way through the draw, having just missed out on a first-round bye, defeating world number 3 team, Ukraine 207-192 and Mexico 219-209 in the quarter-final.
Speaking after the Victory Ceremony, Ki explained why it had fallen on her to secure the win. "Lee shot the first arrow because she is the brave one and I shot the last because I have more experience," she said. "I wasn't nervous at all because if I do my best, I know it will go in the gold."
Personal details of the South Korean Team members are
- Choi is 27 years and weighs 65 kg or 143 lbs and studies at Wooseok University, South Korea and her hobby is reading.
- Ki, 24, weighs 55 kg or 121 lbs and attended Gwangju Women's University, Gwangju, South Korea.
- Lee is 27 years of age and weighs 60 kg or 132 lbs and attended Real Estate Studies at Jeonju University, Jeonju, South Korea and her hobbies are singing and listening to music. She was formerly involved in athletics as a sprinter.
These are the rules which archers compete under at the Olympics.
Archers stand 70 metres from their target and score points by shooting arrows at 10 concentric scoring zones, from the golden 'bullseye' 10-score at the centre to the one-score on the white outer ring. They have 40 seconds to release each arrow.
In the individual and team competitions, a preliminary round to determine seeding takes place before the official start of the Olympic Games, consisting of 72 arrows.
The seedings are used to determine who plays whom in the head-to-head elimination rounds. In the individual competition, 64 archers compete in a knock-out format, with matches comprising 12 arrows each.
Any country that qualifies three male or three female archers into an individual event can compete in the corresponding team event. Team events follow the same competition format as the individual events, with the exception that knockout matches consist of 24 arrows per country, eight per archer.
