Items24The creator’s order
  1. 1Darrell PaceDarrell PaceBorn 23 Oct 1956Pace won Olympic individual gold in Montreal in 1976 and again in Los Angeles in 1984, with world titles in 1975 and 1979 between them. In his era there were no head-to-head matches: the Olympic event was a double FITA round of 288 arrows over four days, so the pressure was a slow squeeze rather…0
  2. 2Kim Soo-nyungKim Soo-nyungKim was 17 when she won individual and team gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, in front of a home crowd expecting exactly that. She added team gold and individual silver in Barcelona, stepped away from the sport, then returned for Sydney 2000 and won a fourth gold with the team plus individual…0
  3. 3Justin HuishJustin HuishHuish arrived at the 1996 Atlanta Games ranked no higher than 24th in the world and left with both men's golds, individual and team, the first male archer to win the pair. The knockout matches were short 12-arrow contests in front of a loud home crowd, and he beat Sweden's Magnus Petersson 112-107…0
  4. 4Simon FairweatherSimon FairweatherFairweather was world champion in 1991, then spent nearly a decade as a contender without an Olympic medal before Sydney 2000. With the home crowd behind him he won the individual gold, Australia's first in Olympic archery. A home Games can freeze an archer, because the spectators and expectations…0i
  5. 5Yun Mi-jinYun Mi-jinYun won the Sydney 2000 individual title at 17 and set an Olympic record of 173 out of 180 for an 18-arrow match along the way, then matched that score in Athens four years later. She also won team gold at both Games, three Olympic titles in all. The 18-arrow match was the knockout format of the…0
  6. 6Park Sung-hyun (archer)Park Sung-hyun (archer)Born 1 Jan 1983Park won the world title on her international debut in 2001, then took individual and team gold at Athens 2004. In Beijing she added a third gold with the team and reached the individual final again, losing by a single point. Two consecutive Olympic individual finals from Korea's ultra-competitive…0
  7. 7Zhang JuanjuanZhang JuanjuanBorn 2 Jan 1982South Korean women had won every Olympic individual title since 1984 when Zhang reached the knockout rounds in Beijing in 2008. Shooting at a home Games, in gusting wind, she beat Korean archers in the semi-final and final, edging Park Sung-hyun 110-109 for gold. She had already taken team silver…0i
  8. 8Viktor RubanViktor RubanRuban became world champion in Madrid in 2005, then won Olympic gold in Beijing three years later by a single point over Korea's Park Kyung-mo. That 2008 final was among the last Olympic matches decided on cumulative score before the set system arrived, so every arrow counted to the end and there…0i
  9. 9Oh Jin-hyekOh Jin-hyekOh had been on the Korean team since 1999 without winning a major individual title, which makes London 2012 remarkable: at 30 he became the first Korean man to win Olympic individual gold, in the first Games to use set play. Nine years later he was back in Tokyo, aged 39, shooting for the men's…0i
  10. 10Ki Bo-baeKi Bo-baeKi's London 2012 individual final against Mexico's Aída Román finished level on sets and went to a single-arrow shoot-off, the purest pressure test archery has, where the arrow nearest the centre wins. Ki took it, adding to her team gold from the same week. She won team gold again in Rio with…0i