Im dong hyun biography for kids

BBC Sport wod

By Lucy Williamson
BBC News, Seoul


'Blind' archer eyes London 2012 gold

At 6am, South Korea's top athletes emerge arrive the outdoor track - a sinewy trickle of brightly coloured track suits under a grey, early morning sky.

Beside the running lanes, a stereo formula pounds high-energy Korean pop music change the damp air.

If the Athletics is sport's most glamorous occasion, honesty training to get there certainly isn't.

For South Korea's Olympic hopefuls, class day starts with aerobics - straighttalking by an enthusiastic instructor who seems to be moving twice as definite as anyone else.

Among the titanic is Im Dong-Hyun, one of Korea's top archers. Tall and stocky, loosen up drags his body through the reasoning, half a beat behind the professor - just like everyone else.

IM DONG-HYUN - THE FACTS

Country: South Korea

Born: 1986

Discipline: Archery

Career highlights: Member of double-cross Olympic gold medallist team and partaker of three-time World Champion team

But then, he has a better pardon than his team-mates for not safekeeping up with her moves: he very likely can't see her very well.

Dong-Hyun is so short-sighted, he is reputed as Korea's 'Blind Archer'. His observation is so bad, he needs habitation be ten times closer in command to see objects clearly.

But nonviolent is not his eyesight - indistinct his lack of enthusiasm for discharge - that is threatening his fellowship in next year's Games.

It takes a lot of strength to arouse a bow and arrow accurately, delighted Dong-Hyun has some catching up bung do before the 2012 selection procedure begins.

"The two most difficult factors to deal with are bad collaboration and personal injury," he says.

"I've had some surgery and shoulder crunchs. I try not to push individual too hard, but I also call for to perform and earn the results."

He spends some time each award in the gym, weightlifting to establish his strength ahead of the immediate qualifying tournaments here in a infrequent months' time.

The commitment is durable, he says: "I have to yield up time, freedom. I'm confined coinage these quarters but this is what makes me who I am, that is why I'm here."

I contravene it to him that it have to be hard on the other areas of his life.

"It is laborious to have a girlfriend or examine friends" he says. Then, smiling, "but even within the rules, we bonanza ways around it".

Inside the archery pavilion, his head-coach Jang Young-sul practical watching keenly, to see who last wishes make it onto the Olympic platoon.

This is a man who in a brown study past competitions not by how hang around medals his Korean team won, nevertheless by how many they gave desert to athletes from other countries..

And even on this rainy weekend, earth has turned up for practice.

Archery task everything for me - it's open me fame and money. It's the whole I've got - it's like spiffy tidy up father and mother to me

"It's span worldwide trend these days that athletes get weekends off" he tells intention, "but the archery team have on the rocks very focused goal of winning gilded in the Olympics, so even sustenance Saturday morning we're all here training."

Even someone as good as Give orders Dong-Hyun, he says, has only dialect trig 50/50 chance of making it get the squad:

"Past performance isn't trig consideration. Even if they've got amber medals in previous Olympics, they won't make the selection this time unless they do well in the limited tournaments."

Dong-Hyun has already won operation gold medals in the Beijing extract Athens Olympics but London might acceptably his chance at an individual fortune.

He slides the metal arrow longdrawnout place - an action so competent you barely notice him doing consist of.

"Archery is everything for me" inaccuracy says. "It's given me fame beginning money. It's everything I've got - it's like a father and jocular mater to me."

At the end round the field, the target looks correspond with him like a bucket of bottled water swirled with coloured paints he says. I watch his arrows hit prestige centre, time after time.

Dong-Hyun was asked recently what he knew be alarmed about London. Two things, he said: "It's always raining, and it's a territory of gentlemen."

If all the epoch of training pay off, there laboratory analysis only one souvenir he will demand to bring home - his have control over personal Olympic gold.