Archer Lim Si-hyeon wins 3 gold medals at Paris Olympics

Korean archer Lim Si-hyeon won the women's individual archery at the 2024 Paris Olympics winning her third gold medal. This is a Korean player's first triple gold medal win at the Paris Olympics.

In the final round of the women's individual archery event at the Paris Olympics held between Korean players on Saturday, Lim defeated colleague Nam Soo-hyeon (age 19) of the Korean national team by 7-3 and won the gold medal. It is the fifth time in total for Korean women's archery to win both gold and silver medals at the Olympics and the first time in 20 years since the 2004 Athens Games. Jeon Hoon-yeong (age 30) lost in the bronze medal match and finished fourth.

Lim, who previously won the women's team event and the mixed event teaming with Kim Woo-jin (age 32) of the men's national team, won three gold medals. She is the second Korean athlete to win three gold medals at the Summer Olympics, after Ansan (age 23), a female archer, first set the record at the Tokyo Games three years ago. Lim also won three gold medals at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year, winning in the women’s team event, mixed event, and individual competition.

South Korean women's sports shooter Yang Ji-in, a college classmate of the same age as Lim, also won a gold medal in the 25-meter pistol shooting final held earlier on the day, defeating Camille Jedrzejewski (France) after a shoot-off, winning Korea’s third gold medal in shooting at the Paris Olympic games. Yang tied with Jedrzejewski 37-37 throughout the tenth series of the finals and then won 4-1 in the shoot-off. Yang and Lim are students at Korea National Sport University in the class of 2022. Korea’s national sports shooting team, which has won three gold and two silver medals as of today, achieved one of the best performances in Olympic history along with the 2012 London Games (three gold and two silver medals).


Heon-Jae Lee uni@donga.com