Park Kyung-mo

Lore & Background

Park Kyung-mo competed for South Korea at the 2004 Summer Olympics in men's individual archery. He won his first three elimination matches, advancing to the quarterfinals, where he faced Tim Cuddihy of Australia and lost 112-111 to the eventual bronze medalist, placing 5th overall. During those Games, he set the Olympic record for an 18-arrow match at 70 meters with a score of 173 out of 180. He was also a member of South Korea's gold medal men's archery team in 2004.

At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Park finished the ranking round with 676 points, three points behind leader Juan René Serrano, earning the fourth seed. He defeated Luiz Trainini (116-99), Kuo Cheng Wei (111-110), and Rafał Dobrowolski (113-105) to reach the quarterfinals. There, he and Juan Carlos Stevens tied at 108 points, requiring an extra round in which Park scored 19 to Stevens' 17. In the semifinal, he beat ranking round winner Serrano, then lost the final to Viktor Ruban 113-112, taking the silver medal.

In the team event at the 2008 Olympics, Park competed alongside Lee Chang-Hwan and Im Dong-Hyun. Their combined ranking round scores (Park 676, Im 670, Lee 669) placed them first, earning a direct seed to the quarterfinals. They defeated Poland 224-222, beat host nation China 221-218 in the semifinal, and won the gold medal against Italy 227-225.

Reader's Guide

Park Kyung-mo's significance lies in his achievement of winning gold medals at all three major World Archery Federation events: the Olympics, the World Archery Championships, and the World Cup finals, a feat that places him among the sport's elite. As a former world number one, he demonstrated consistent high-level performance across multiple international competitions. His Olympic record for an 18-arrow match at 70 meters, set during the 2004 Games, stands as a benchmark of precision in the sport. Park's career includes two Olympic team gold medals (2004 and 2008) and an individual silver medal in 2008, where he came one point short of gold in a closely contested final. His marriage to fellow archer Park Sung-hyun further connects him to a prominent lineage in South Korean archery. The legacy of his accomplishments contributes to South Korea's reputation as a dominant force in Olympic archery, particularly in team events where his contributions helped secure back-to-back gold medals.

Did You Know?

• Park Kyung-mo set the Olympic record for an 18-arrow match at 70 meters with 173 points out of 180 at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
• He lost the 2008 Olympic individual final to Viktor Ruban by a single point, 113-112.
• He won gold medals at the Olympics, World Archery Championships, and World Cup finals.

Ranking Round and the Korean Contingent

Park Kyung-mo finished fourth in the men's individual ranking round at the 2004 Athens Olympics, a result that placed him squarely in the middle of a dominant Korean field. His teammates Im Dong-hyun and Jang Yong-ho took first and fifth respectively, with Im's 687-point mark for 72 arrows shattering the previous world standard set by fellow Korean Shim Young-sung back in 1995. Because the ranking round was shot on 12 August at Dekelia Air Force Base—before the official opening ceremony—the International Olympic Committee declined to recognize the figure as an Olympic record. The broader top five was completed by Italy's Marco Galiazzo in second and Sweden's Magnus Petersson in third, while Ukraine's Dmytro Hrachov matched Jang's score for sixth. The 2000 Olympic medalists—Fairweather, Wunderle, and van Alten—all entered the competition but none ranked above fourteenth, underscoring how firmly Korea held the upper hand in the qualifying stage.

Surviving the Zabrodskiy Tie-Break

In the Round of 32 on 18 August, Park Kyung-mo faced a genuinely frightening moment against Kazakhstan's Stanislav Zabrodskiy. The two men traded arrows through all eighteen shots without separating, forcing the match into a tie-break. Zabrodskiy struck first in the sudden-death sequence, landing a 10 that briefly looked like it would end Park's Olympic run. Rather than crumble, Park matched the 10 and then delivered a second consecutive 10 that Zabrodskiy simply could not answer, sending the Korean through to the Round of 16. The drama of that exchange stood out in a round that also saw Im Dong-hyun post a 171—just one point shy of the Olympic record—and Britain's Laurence Godfrey pull off a stunning upset over second-ranked Magnus Petersson. Park's composure under pressure in that tie-break proved to be one of the defining individual moments of his 2004 campaign, even though the tournament would ultimately not end in a medal.

Quarterfinal Heartbreak and Bracket Limits

The bracket structure at Athens imposed a hard ceiling on what the Korean men could achieve: with the fourth- and fifth-ranked archers meeting in the quarterfinals and the victor then facing the top seed in the semifinals, the team's maximum haul was a gold and a bronze. In the quarterfinals on 19 August, that ceiling became a floor of disappointment. Both Korean archers still in the draw were eliminated in razor-thin one-point losses, one to Hiroshi Yamamoto and the other to Tim Cuddihy. The closeness of those defeats made the outcome especially bitter, as a single arrow's difference separated the Koreans from a medal match. Cuddihy, who had posted the round's highest score of 112, went on to the bronze medal match, while Yamamoto advanced to the final. For Park Kyung-mo, the quarterfinal exit meant his 2004 Olympic journey ended without a podium finish despite having survived the gauntlet of the earlier rounds and the intense Zabrodskiy tie-break.

A Final Without Korea

The gold medal match at the Panathinaiko Stadium on 19 August pitted Italy's Marco Galiazzo, a first-time Olympian, against Japan's veteran Hiroshi Yamamoto, with the Korean archers conspicuously absent from the podium. Galiazzo opened with a pair of 10s to take an early lead, but Yamamoto responded in the second end. The Italian then hit another pair of 10s in the third end to build a two-point cushion, and he held that advantage through the final three arrows to claim Italy's first-ever Olympic gold in archery. Yamamoto's silver became his second Olympic medal, joining the bronze he had won at the 1984 Games. The broader tournament had been marked by upsets at every level—from Bhutan's Tashi Peljor defeating France's Jocelyn de Grandis in the Round of 64 to Godfrey's elimination of Petersson—yet the final itself was a clean, decisive performance by Galiazzo. For Park Kyung-mo and his Korean teammates, watching from the stands was a stark reminder of how a single one-point quarterfinal loss can reshape an entire Olympic dream.