Olympic Champion off Korean team?

KI Bo Bae and YUN Ok Hee both finished outside of the top eight at Korea’s national team selections this week. The top eight archers should form the nation’s squad in 2014, as well as acting as the first selection stage for this year’s Incheon Asian Games.

Double-gold medallist at London 2012 in the individual and team competitions, KI won the team and mixed team world champion titles at Belek last year. She’s currently ranked second in the world, behind 2013 Korean teammate YUN.

YUN won the World Cup Final in Paris last year in her return to the international circuit. She wasn’t seen shooting out of Korea in 2011 or 2012, despite winning the World Cup Final in 2010 at Edinburgh.

In a cruel twist of fate, 2014 might be the second time in three years she’s off the Korean team the year after winning archery’s premier international tour.

When the Korean team list for Shanghai is released, we’ll know for sure whether the results reported by the Korean Archery Association (in Korean) were stuck to – or exceptions were made for these highly-successful athletes.

Either way, Korean’s men’s team will have familiar faces. OH Jin Hyek, the other Olympic Champion and current men’s world number one, came top, World Cup Final winner IM Dong Hyun fourth and young world champion LEE Seungyun fifth.

Third in the results list was KIM Woojin. KIM was world champ before LEE, at Turin 2011, before being controversially left out of the Korean London 2012 team in favour of first-time international KIM Bubmin.

All this is a great reminder of one thing: whoever shoots for Korea internationally this year will pick up medals, because the number of quality archers in the country is just massive.

UPDATE: We originally told you KIM Woojin was top and OH Jin Hyek second. Actually it was OH top and KIM third – but it doesn’t change our point: Korea archery has as much elite depth as ever!