Legally Blind Olympic Archer Has Already Broken Two World Records

The 2012 Summer Olympics are only a day old (and the Opening Ceremonies haven’t even taken place yet), but we’ve already had a number of firsts.

Yesterday we told you about the first controversy of the Games, which sprang up when organizers running the women’s soccer match between North Korea and Colombia put the South Korean flag up next to the names of the North Korean players on the jumbotron.

Then, this morning we told you about the first epic fail of the Games, which belongs to Admir Mehmedi of the Swiss soccer team, as he missed a wide open net from two feet out during their opening match against Gabon yesterday.

Now, we have a story about the first world records being broken at these Olympics. The athlete is a South Korean archer named Im Dong-hyun, and luckily for Olympic organizers, they won’t have to know the difference between North and South Korea with this guy–because he’s freakin’ blind and can’t see the scoreboard anyway.

That’s right, a blind man just helped shatter a couple of world records in archery at the Olympics.

And what have you done today, not legally blind people?

Anyway, the records were broken in the opening “ranking” round of the archery competition. First Im broke the individual 72-arrow record (which he also set) by 3 points, with a score of 699. Then, with that score he helped teammates Kim Bubmin and Oh Jin-hyek obliterate the team record by 18 points. with a 216-arrow total of 2,087 points.

So while it’s only the first day of the Olympics, this story is pretty awesome, and will be pretty hard to beat.

Hat Tip – [The Guardian]

Share This