Individual, Recurve, Men

The ranking round not only determined the seedings for the individual event, but also the rankings for the Men’s Team and the Mixed Doubles events.

As with the women, archers from the Republic of Korea finished first and second in the ranking round, Kim Wu-Jin finishing first, followed by Kim Je-Deok.

Arguably the best match in the early elimination rounds was the defeat of Tang Chih-Chun (TPE) by reigning Olympic champion Mete Gazoz (TUR) by 6-2, although the final score did not reflect the quality of the set scores (30-29, 28-27, 27-28, 30-29), with no arrow scoring less than 9.

Perhaps surprisingly the world ranked number one archer, Marcus d’Almeida (BRA) finished in 17th place in the ranking round, giving him a more challenging elimination pathway than he would have liked. It meant he met Kim Wu-Jin, world-ranked second, in the Round of 16, a contest won by Kim, in a match where he scored all 10’s apart from one arrow which was a 9. Kim won the match 7-1. His reward for winning was a match against reigning Olympic champion Gazoz, where Kim won the second, third, and fifth sets, assuring himself of a semi-final place. There, he met his compatriot Lee U-Seok, the 2014 Youth Olympic champion, and, in a thrilling contest, Kim prevailed, winning a shoot-off.

In the other half of the draw, Kim Je-Deok was favored to reach the final and started with victories over Wian Roux (RSA) 6-0, Federico Musolesi (ITA) 6-4, and Santiago Arcila (COL) by 6-4. However, in the quarter-finals he met an inspired Brady Ellison (USA), competing in his fifth Olympics, and Ellison dominated the match, winning 6-0. In the semi-final, Ellison came up against Florian Unruh (GER), who had only reached the semi-finals by defeating the host’s Baptiste Addis in a shoot-off in the quarter-finals, when his arrow was judged to have landed closer to the centre of the target, both archers scoring 10. However, Ellison continued his winning streak by 7-3 against Unruh to reach the final.

The match for the bronze medal was won by Lee U-Seok with a score of 6-0, although the score flattered Lee as the match was much closer than the scoreline suggests. The final was another thrilling match, Ellison winning the first and third sets, only for Kim Wu-Jin to reply by winning the second and fourth sets. The fifth and final set saw a remarkably rare tie of 30-30, thus necessitating a single shoot-off arrow to determine the gold and silver medals. Both archers scored a 10, but Kim was declared the winner as his arrow was about 5 millimetres closer to the centre of the target.

Hence, Kim Wu-Jin repeated the success of his compatriot Lim Si-Hyeon, winning all three events he had entered, and ensuring the Republic of Korea had a clean-sweep of all five Olympic titles.