The 10th saw more stress than most and ended in a Sunday afternoon shootout with China, three arrows each, which South Korea won with an infinitesimal edge and a 29-27 score in front of a giddy crowd with bouncing Korean flags.
“First of all, as a Korean athlete, I’m very proud of being a Korean athlete,” 30-year-old Jeon Hun-young said.
Yeah, why not? After all, whatever team of any kind anyone supports, it’s not as good as hers. She and 21-year-old Lim Si-hyeon and 19-year-old Nam Su-hyeon had just joined the Olympics’ most exacting parade, which already had gone through Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo without quivering into the ticklish realm of silver. It just hadn’t yet won with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop and right in front of the Dome des Invalides, home of Mr. Bonaparte’s tomb.
Come 2028, it can go for 11 somewhere near the HOLLYWOOD sign.
For now, they’re 24 South Korean women from 10 three-woman South Korean teams. One of the 24 won on three different teams, and four of them won on two. Six have reached their 50s, six their 40s, six their 30s, five their 20s and, because they apparently lacked a teen, here’s 19-year-old Nam, who won’t reach 20 until January.
Just listing their names can cause digital fatigue while signifying what a marvel this thing has become: Kim Soo-nyung, Wang Hee-kyung, Yun Young-sook, Cho Youn-jeong, Lee Eun-kyung, Kim Jo-Sun, Kim Kyung-Wook, Yoon Hye-Young, Kim Nam-soon, Yun Mi-jin, Lee Sung-jin, Park Sung-hyun, Yun Ok-Hee, Joo Hyun-Jung, Choi Hyeon-ju, Ki Bo-bae, Chang Hye-jin, Choi Mi-sun, An San, Jang Min-hee, Kang Chae-young, Jeon Hun-young, Lim Si-hyeon and Nam Su-hyeon.
From 70 meters (almost 230 feet) aiming for scornful little concentric circles, they’ve won again and again and so many more agains.
“For South Korea,” Lim said, “it’s very important to keep the first place. And also, we have changed a lot of teams. And I’m very happy about keeping this place in Korean archery history.” She soon added, “Other countries have progressed a lot, but we will do our best to keep our place.”
She said this, of course, with ample calm and zero hubris.
The Koreans won near the Acropolis at Athens 2004, when the cicadas chirped outside and anyone present felt lucky and South Korea trailed China 240-231 with one arrow to go, before Park Sung-hyun would tell of just leaving it to divine will as her closing bid seared right smack into a gasp of a 10. They won on Lord’s Cricket Ground at London 2012 when it went to the last arrow against China again with Ki Bo-bae needing a nine and getting a nine for a 210-209 win. They have beaten, in finals, Indonesia, China, Germany, Ukraine, China again, China again, China again, Russia, a collection of Russian athletes, and China again. It’s no wonder China hired a Korean coach. “He told us to really be ourselves,” China’s Li Jiaman said.
The selves they brought beneath the impressionist-painting Parisian sun looked plenty good enough to nick the 10-Olympiad phenomenon. Then again, the Koreans had to wriggle out of more thickets than ever. Since the format went to playing sets with six arrows per side at Rio de Janeiro 2016 — two points for a set win, one for a draw, and five points wins — the two most recent South Korea teams had played 18 sets, won 14 and drawn four.
In the three rounds Sunday, South Korea lost five sets and benefited from some opposing nerves. Chinese Taipei almost snared the first set in the quarterfinals, needing just an eight to win, but registered a six to lose. It won the second set anyway, but then South Korea started off 10-10-9 and started off to a 6-2 win.
The Netherlands, then, put the Koreans in a semifinal deficit, two sets to one, after the Dutch surmounted a 29-point ask when all three of them — Quinty Roeffen, Gaby Schloesser and Laura van der Winkel — forged 10s. Well, South Korea went ahead and spent the fourth set going 10-10-10-10-9-10. Who does that? They do, of course. It, too, went to a shoot-off, and the Koreans had the steadier hand, going 9-10-7 to win 26-23.
With the final about an hour after the semi, the Koreans looked unbeatable and went ahead 4-0. That prompted the cringe of one of the more unfortunate human sports habits, that of having live announcers at events offering perspective. If the Koreans could understand passages in North American English such as “can etch their names in stone forever” and “a legacy to carry on their shoulders,” just as they prepared to clinch, they might have regretted their English lessons.
And as much of the match went on with the sounds of happy Mexican fans out on the street between the venue and the dome, for Mexico had claimed the bronze, China promptly won the next two sets to reach 4-4, and the dynasty teetered. But when Jeon and Nam sandwiched 10s around Lim’s nine and Li finished with an eight while needing a 10 to tie, another four years of preparation ended with another gold.
“We are always concentrating on the training,” Jeon said, “and we all like the challenge to a new objective. So we, all of us, did our best, and that’s the key to success.”
So they all three got a flag, rotated to greet various stands and posed for photos with all their fingers held up to signify the 10. Come Los Angeles 2028, that act might get tricky.