Legally blind archer from South Korea dominates the competition at the 2012 Olympics

Every archery coach will tell you that good archery is about doing the same thing, repeatably, every time.   It requires that you learn your body so very well that a forearm rotated slightly, or a muscle half an inch off feels like wearing a coat three sizes too small.

And while most people that learn archery don’t believe that when they start, the more they practice the more they learn the nuances of how their body, muscles, and skeleton work above the waist.

There are archers in our club that shoot barebow (without a target sight) that can outshoot other archers who have sights on their bows at 18, 30, and 50 meters.

South Korean Olympic archer Im Dong-Hyun takes that to a whole new level. Legally blind with myopia, he shoots even without corrective lenses or contact lenses.  At 70 meters, he can discern only the blurry colors of the target face.  Never the less his muscle control and repeatability is so good, he broke his own Olympic record this year during the ranking round, shooting 699 points out of a possible 720 in 72 arrows.  In case you’re doing the math, that’s mostly shooting perfect 10’s.  His two sighted teammates from South Korea each shot a 698 and a 690.

Update: The South Korean Men’s team was defeated by Team USA and won a bronze in this year’s Olympics.

1 Comment

  1. Katherine on August 12, 2012 at 9:52 pm

    It must be hard! I shoot without my glasses but to be legally blind…They say that he has tunnel vision so the only thing he can see is the target. Some might think that as an advantage since you can only see that one thing and no distractions.