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| Acher Lee Ouk-soo, left, draws his bow in the bronze medal match of the Mixed Team Compound Open, at the Sambodromo venue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday. Right is his teammate, Kim Mi-soon. / Yonhap |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Korean pair archers, Lee Ouk-soo and Kim Mi-soon, won a bronze medal in the Mixed Team Compound Open of the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games at the Sambodromo, Tuesday.
The mixed pair members, who were eliminated by the British archers by one point in the semifinal, won the medal in the match against Turkish archers Bulent Korkmaz and Handan Biroglu.
Korea defeated Turkey by ten points, following the Turkish male archer Korkmaz's failure to hit the target at the first end, scoring zero.
It is the Korean team's first-ever medal in the compound event.
The 51-year-old male archer Lee is a multiple Olympian. Lee has participated in seven consecutive Paralympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games.
The former special forces sergeant became disabled in 1986, after being injured by a rollover accident while he was engaged military training. He received the injury on his spinal cord and his lower body was paralyzed.
However, Lee was not frustrated. He became an archer as a new career in 1989.
As a Recurve archer, Lee garnered several medals in the Paralympics, including a bronze medal in the 1992 Barcelona Paralympic Games and a silver medal in the following Atlanta Games.
In 2005, he made another turn to become a Compound archer, as he felt overwhelmed by the fear that he would make a mistake while making his shots. He practiced hard to win a medal, but was not awarded one until the Rio Games.
"I feel happy because I finally won a medal," he told the reporters after winning the bronze.
His teammate, Kim Mi-soon had been a table tennis player until 2011. She won the first medal in her Paralympics debut as an archer.
The 46-year-old, who has a hip disease, has played table tennis for her rehabilitation since the age of twelve.
As a table tennis player, she captured several medals at international events, including a bronze at the 2014 Incheon Para Asian Games and a silver at the 2010 Guangzhou Para Asian Games.
However, she became an archer because she felt pain from the harsh movements she had to make playing table tennis.
Both Korean archers are looking forward to winning more medals in the upcoming individual events.
As of Tuesday, Korea ranked 16th in the medal standings with three golds, five silvers and eight bronzes.
Korea won a silver medal in the Boccia BC3 pair event and a bronze in the women's individual table tennis event on same day.
