Road to Rio: South Korea's archers training mind and body to continue golden legacy

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가자 리우로: 몸과 마음을 준비하는 대한민국 양궁팀
Once in 4 years.
It's time for the best in respective Summer sporting discipline to shine.
The excitement and pressure is reaching a boiling point.
There is one particular event that has Korea written all over the gold medals up for grabs.
Kwon Jang-ho met up with the nation's celebrated Archery squad, feeling the weight of expectations this time around.

With a month to go, Rio is now in sight and Korea's Olympic teams are making their final preparations.

The Korean Olympic Committee has set its sights on another top 10 finish, with a target of 10 gold medals.
It's not going to be easy.
They will have to deal with a 12-hour time difference, an unfamiliar environment and safety and health fears, including malaria and the Zika virus.

All of Team Korea will be under pressure to beat those odds, but the sport carrying the weight of the highest expectations is archery.
Since South Korea first competed in Olympic archery in 1984, they have won 19 golds, out of a possible 30.
That's a 63-percent win rate.
Korea's women archers have been especially successful.
They have won every gold medal, bar one, in the individual and team events.
The question everyone always asks is how did they get so good?

"I'm here at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. You may be asking why I'm at a baseball stadium, and what does it have to do with archery? Well, thats because the Korean national archery team are here for some special psychological training, practicing to focus and perform under distracting conditions."

The loud MCs, blaring music and cheering crowds are all designed to give the athletes a taste of what it's like to perform in front of an Olympic audience.

"Compared to practicing at the athlete's village, performing in front this huge crowd definitely makes me more nervous."

"When our archers make mistakes in big tournaments, it's not because they lack the skills, but they get affected by the atmosphere and it makes them not perform to their full potential."

This is part of an extensive mental training regimen the athletes go through and that Korean archery has successfully developed since the 80s.
The psychological aspect is said to be the most important factor in competitive archery, more than skill or health, and it is more important than for any other sport.
Although the exact nature of the training is kept under wraps, it involves a number of techniques, from visualization, where you imagine your best performance and remember that feeling, to biofeedback, where involuntary body movements or reactions, such as blood pressure, are analyzed using electronic equipment and the athletes train to control them.

"Hard work and skill count for 95 to 98 percent. At big events like the Olympics, the competitors' fitness and skill level are similar, but the order of the medals is determined by how strong you are mentally."

The psychological toll is especially hard on the Korean archers.
With each successful Olympics, the pressure gets ever greater for the next generation to match their predecessors feats.

"The media has been focusing on me possibly getting back-to-back golds, and I can't help but be aware of that."

"I always feel that pressure. I know I'm defending Korea's pride in archery, so I'm always aware of that burden."

The coaching staff is doing everything they can to prepare the athletes.
They've even set up their practice grounds in Seoul to match the look and feel of what they'll find in Rio, so the archers get used to the environment.

"We've been to Brazil four times already, and during those trips we measured everyone's biorhythms. Some take four days for their biorhythms to adjust and go back to normal, some take six days. So even the littlest things are covered."

"Even though Korea's record in archery has been exceptional, by paying attention the smallest of details in their training and preparation, they're looking to leave nothing to chance.
Kwon Jang-ho, Arirang News."

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