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Lim Si-yeon (left) and Kim Woo-jin pose after winning the mixed team archery event at the Paris Games at Invalides in Paris on Friday. (Yonhap) |
Archer Lim Si-yeon of South Korea won her third gold medal Saturday at the Paris Games, joining an elite group of athletes from the country who have won multiple Olympic gold medals.
Kim Woo-jin, her mixed team partner, has already bagged two gold and is also seeking to complete the golden hat trick by winning the individual men's archery event, slated for later Sunday.
If Kim wins the individual event, it would be the fifth gold medal of his career, more than any other athlete in South Korean history. In addition to his two golds in Paris, the seasoned veteran archer won Olympic gold in the men's team event at the 2016 and 2020 events, cementing his place among the most accomplished Korean Olympians.
Lim is, as of now, only the second Korean ever to win three gold medals at a single Summer Olympics. The feat has been accomplished twice in the Winter Games, by speedskaters Jin Sun-yu and Ahn Hyun-soo -- the latter of which went on to become naturalized Russian citizen Viktor An and won three Olympic gold medals for his adopted country.
The first Korean to ever win three Olympic gold medals in the Summer Games was An San, an archer who won the female individual, team and mixed team event of the 2020 Tokyo Games, which were held in 2021. The 23-year-old An attempted to defend her titles this year, but failed to make the cut for the national team, a testament to Korea's dominance in the sport.
So far, a total of 105 gold medals have been won by athletes donning South Korea's national team uniform. Here are some of the athletes who won the most gold medals for the country.
Four-time gold medalists
Regardless of what happens on Sunday, Archer Kim has already joined the exclusive list of four-time Korean gold medalists, sharing the top spot with shooter Jin Jong-oh, female archer Kim Soo-nyung and short track speedskater Chun Lee-kyung.
Jin and Kim Soo-nyung also won more medals than anyone else in the country's history as well, with Jin winning two silver medals while Kim won one silver and one bronze.
Three-time gold medalists
There are eight Olympic archers who have won at least three gold medals in history, and all of them are from South Korea. Besides the aforementioned athletes, Park Sung-gyun, Ki Bo-bae and Yoon Mi-jin of the women's team and Kim Je-seok of the men's team have each won three gold medals.
Lim is the latest to win a third gold, but Kim Je-deok is the youngest Korean ever to win three, having just turned 20 in April this year.
Gu Bon-gil of this year's champion saber fencing team also won the third gold medal of his career in the French capital. Other three-time gold medalists are short track speedskater Choi Min-jeong and the aforementioned Viktor An.
Honorable mentions
Speedskater Lee Seung-hoon won two Olympic gold medals, and he is the only other athlete besides Jin Jong-oh and Kim Soo-hyung to win six Olympic medals. In addition to his two gold medals, he won three silver and one bronze medal.
Marathon runners Son Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong, the first Koreans to ever win an Olympic medal, are excluded from this list as South Korea did not yet exist when Son won at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Korea was colonized by Japan between 1910 and 1945, and the gold and bronze medals won by Son and Nam, respectively, belong to Japan in the record books.
Son famously hid the Japanese flag on his chest with the laurel plant he received as the winner at the awards ceremony. Both he and Nam were seen bowing their heads at the ceremony, in a tribute to their lost nation.
