Woojin says Asian Games final against Woo Seok will be “tough”

The world’s number one ranked recurve man Kim Woojin has said his gold medal match at the 2018 Asian Games against 21-year-old Korean teammate Lee Woo Seok will be a tough one.

“He’s got a good aim and good game,” said Kim. “I feel really good [for making the final] but the event is not over yet, and I need to focus on doing my best for the rest of the competition.”

The pair already faced off in one major final in 2018, at the second stage of the 2018 Hyundai Archery World Cup in Antalya, Turkey – which Woo Seok won, 6-2, to qualify for his first Hyundai Archery World Cup Final.

Two-time World Archery Champion Kim seeded lowest of the Korean recurve men in Jakarta, but was picked to shoot in the eliminations at an event in which only two athletes per nation may advance to matchplay.

In the semifinals, Kim came up against Riau Ega Agatha, the Indonesian archer who unceremoniously knocked him – the presumptive favourite – out of the 2016 Olympic Games in the second round.

“Of course that [match] crossed my mind, but the Olympic Games in Rio were done a long time ago and now it’s the Asian Games. This was a different day,” said Woojin.

Trailing in Jakarta, 4-0, Agatha shot a perfect 30 that looked like it had potential to spark a comeback and another upset. But Kim quickly squashed that possibility, calmly shooting 29 points in the fourth set, to his opponent’s 28, to take the match and make the Jakarta final.

Woo Seok, the Youth Olympic Champion from Nanjing in 2014, makes the Asian Games final in his first international senior season.

Korean recurve men have won the Asian Games title six of the 10 times it has been contested. Kim Woojin won the event in 2010, at the age of 18, just one year before his first World Archery Champion crown.

Jakarta marks the first time in the history of archery at the Asian Games that the recurve women’s final will not include an athlete from Korea. It’s guaranteed, though, that the country will take recurve men’s gold, with Kim and Lee both making it to the title match.

The archery competitions at the 2018 Asian Games take place on 21-26 August in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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