Paris: The first competition at one of Paris’ postcard Olympic venues, opened on Thursday with the first records of the Games as Lim Si-hyeon topped women’s archery qualifying at the Invalides.
The ancient martial competition is being held on the lawn in front of the gilded dome of France’s military museum, where Napoleon is entombed.
In an event in which South Koreans have won nine of the last 10 Olympic golds, the records the 20-year-old Lim shot down as she scored 694 out of a maximum of 720 belonged to her compatriots.
She broke the world record of 692 set by Kang Chae-young in 2019 and shattered the Olympic mark of 680 set in Tokyo by An San.
“I was very nervous because it was my first Olympics, and I tried to enjoy the game as much as I could,” Lim said.
Her closest challenger was, inevitably, a second South Korean, Nam Suh-yeon, with 688.
Yang Xiaolei of China was third on 673, 17 points behind Lim. Casey Kaufhold of the United States, who won the test event on the same site last year and entered the Olympics the top-ranked woman, was on 672.
The qualifying rounds in archery are something of a phoney war as all 64 competitors still advance to the knockout stage.
The scores on Thursday determined seedings for the singles and doubles. Some nations, including South Korea, always select their highest-scoring qualifier in mixed doubles, so Lim gave herself a chance of three golds.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to take on the mixed match challenge. I will try to seize the opportunity,” she said.
No provision
Lim shot 72 times on Thursday. In the head-to-head knock-out, where the winner is the first to take three 10-arrow sets, Lim might only shoot 30, in victory or defeat, when she faces the lowest-ranked qualifier, Alondra Rivera of Puerto Rico in the first round.
“I shot with the idea of preparing and not being greedy, and I am grateful that I was able to maintain my performance until the end,” she said.
Organisers dodged one potentially thorny issue on Thursday when the Israeli entrant Mikaella Moshe qualified 18th and, in a draw that includes Indonesians, among others, a Malaysian, a Saudi, an Egyptian and a Tunisian, will face Madalina Amaistroaie of Romania.
A World Archery official told AFP that they had made no provision to avoid politically sensitive matchups, and that their experience suggested there were unlikely to be problems.
The qualifying also represented the lull before the likely tumult because it uses the 32 targets and was held on the practice range, which has no room for spectators.
For the knockout rounds, competition will move to the main arena with a capacity of 8,000. Even though the Olympic arenas in 2016 and 2021 had similar capacity, Rio’s archery did not sell out and Tokyo 2020 was hit by Covid.
US coach Chris Webster said he was sure the atmosphere would bring out the best in athletes who spend much of their time working to control their adrenaline.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s 50,000 people there. It’s still for the Olympic Games.”
