Im Dong-Hyun is the legally blind archer who set an Olympic record this week for his country of South Korea. Find out what all of the hype is about here.
Sure, there are two things that you must have to be good at archery: patience and good aim. But to have good aim you have to have really good vision, right? Not so for this Olympian who just set a world record.
Im only has 10% of his vision in his left eye and 20% in his right, but that doesn’t stop him from being the world’s best.
He just recently set a world record in May with 699 points. Just this week, he beat his own record by about 18 arrows.
Even with becoming a worldwide superstar, Im is staying humble:
“This is just the first round, so I will not get too excited by it…”
I guess that means he is concerned that someone else might beat it, but I would be willing to bet that if someone does, they would have better vision than him.
The most amazing part is that he doesn’t use fancy glasses like you might be thinking – and he already has a few gold medals. Instead of using glasses, he says all he can do is tell the difference between the colors on the target.
Even his coach was not jumping up and down over the record, instead he was focused on Saturday’s gold medal event.
Brady Ellison , another one of the greatest archers in the world, said that the record was also set because of the weather:
“I don’t think you get those types of scores anywhere if the weather wasn’t just perfect today.”
I think that takes something away from the accomplishment. I’m all for supporting the Team USA, but in this case, it is way more amazing to me for a person who is almost completely blind to break world records than anyone else.
The craziest part is that no one was allowed to even watch the record-breaking round. I guess the Olympics Committee didn’t even sell tickets for it. That won’t be the case for tomorrow’s event, which will actual decide who gets the gold medal.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m rooting for Im Dong-Hyun, even if he isn’t an American. Check out a video of him competing below:
