An Interview with Ki Bo Bae, Olympic Gold Medalist

On a hot day last summer, in a crowded stadium in London, the Republic of Korea won its staggering seventh consecutive gold medal in women’s team archery. Just a few days later, a young lady from that winning team beat Mexico’s Aída Román in a head-to-head shootout, taking the individual women’s gold back to Korea for the seventh time in the last 20 years. That woman was Ki Bo-bae, and she shares our home here in the city of Gwangju. These days, she can’t walk down its streets without being recognized by proud Koreans.

But she still makes time for her fans – both native and those originating from far-flung locales. So much so that Gwangju News was recently given the chance to meet this hero of the bow, in an interview conducted at the Yeomju sports center.

Ki is by no means resting on her laurels. Catching up with her on a break from heavy training, we took note of Ki’s gentle voice and lithe, strong hands. Her eyes stand out too – bold with concentration. Hours spent locking in on targets may have left her with a thousand-yard stare, but her face remains soft and lovely, and her manner is warm and kind.

She spoke gently about her childhood in Anyang, and the things that have shaped her passion for archery.

“It was curiosity that got me started,” she said, recalling the first time she joined a school club at the age of 11.

But of course curiosity alone will not carry you along to Olympic gold. By the time she became serious, still a girl in all respects, she was up to practicing for six to seven hours a day. With such due diligence, combined with parental backing and her culture’s mad pace for obsessive preparation, she would grow great in time.

“At first of course, I wasn’t much good. I decided to dream my dream bigger…. so I had to make sacrifices.”

She must have missed out on something; some essential period of childhood tranquility was surely lost among the nocks and vanes. But she seems to have very little regret. And why would she? Who among us can say we have experienced the adoration of our entire country, hard-earned by being the absolute best at what we do?

Ki can. She recalls that the bigger her dream grew, the more the rest of her young girl’s life shrank into the background, for being a champion at something as competitive as archery comes at no small price.

“I was so busy training, I didn’t even know that I had gone through puberty,” she told us, no doubt somewhat embarrassed by the admission.

Her prescient parents (thankfully, for the future of Korean sporting pride) were supportive of her. They shuttled her to and from practice and made great allowances, always picking up the slack and helping her to advance. They were also both so pleasantly surprised by her ability.

“I am the only athlete in my family,” she laughed.

There were other supporters too, coaches and friends. There were rumors that one of her coaches had made her handle snakes in order to learn dexterity and fearlessness. Ki assured us that they were false.

There are rituals and ceremony, though. Ki told us that she has a special way of counting the arrows she uses, to ensure that she never gets an unlucky one: numbering each arrow with a mark before competitions. Instead of dreading the thirteenth arrow, as westerners might, she instead always skips the fourth one. This, of course, is in deference to the fact that the Sino-Korean word for “four” and for “death” are the same (sa), and thus the fourth arrow has always seemed ill-fated to her.

Superstitions aside, Ki knows how to perform when the pressure is on, as it was in full force in the 2012 London Olympics. She was no stranger to competition even then, having already competed in the Asian Games among many other such tournaments, but the feeling of being in the Olympics, she says, was incomparable.

“It felt different when I participated in the Olympics. There was great pressure to achieve [the gold] as an athlete to represent Korea, which is well-known for archery and archers.”

It is true. No one can deny that Ki comes from a great tradition of wonderful Korean archers. The women of the ROK in particular have completely dominated the competition for the last two decades, only failing to win gold once, when they came in second to China in Beijing, 2008. Where does such skill come from? We asked the expert: “What makes this a sport that Korea, as a nation and a culture, seems to excel at?”

She mentioned Korea’s “tenacity,” and speculated that the Han peninsula has a long tradition of hunting wild and sometimes dangerous game using bows and arrows. Both are true enough, and surely the tireless hours that Koreans spend at work and practice must be of key importance.

With such history and culture at her back, the incredible feeling when she finally won the gold was breathtaking. She described it to us: “I cannot express how happy I was then. In fact, Ithink I was out of my mind. I couldn’t believe that I won the gold medal.”

When she returned to Korea, and back to Gwangju, she would find that she was a local star. These days, she gets a lot of attention. One might be tempted to call it adulation, but the humble Ki knows how to handle it with grace and dignity.

“I was spotlighted…. The attention I received made me feel glad that I won two gold medals… When people recognized me, I felt that I had achieved a big thing.”

So what is in store for this world-class athlete? Surely more medals are in the cards for her future, and at the very least a trip to Rio in 2016. She keeps up her training at a frantic pace, keeping sharp.

“I will participate in the World Championship this year and I will do my best so I can participate in the Brazil Olympics as well.”

She also has plans for the future that go beyond pulling a bowstring. We learned that Ki is going to do a postgraduate course at Gwangju Women’s University. She’ll take special education so that in the future, she can teach disabled children archery so that they can participate in the Paralympics. Also, she’d like to live in London for a while, having fallen in love with the city during the Olympics.

Ki Bo-bae is a true sports hero, and a role model for young Koreans who want to achieve something that doesn’t necessarily require late night cramming and a high SAT score. The Gwangju News team left the interview feeling awe-inspired by her achievements, her dedication and the fact that she remains so humble and kind throughout all the limelight. She is a true credit to her country.With Ki at the helm, there is no doubt that the dominance of Korean archery will continue on into the future.