After two days of football preliminaries outside London, the city held its first Olympic competition yesterday — archery at the hallowed cricket ground.
There was some confusion at the site when people mistakenly thought they could enter the free competition without a ticket.
There were no such problems on the pitch, where South Korean archers set the first two world records of London 2012.
South Korea’s legally blind archer didn’t do any celebrating after setting the first world records of the Olympics.
Im Dong-hyun broke the 72-arrow mark with 699 points in men’s archery yesterday. He held the previous world record with 696 points. He also took part in the team shoot, teaming with Kim Bub-min and Oh Jin-hyek.
Blurry, it seems, is more familiar to Im as he aims at the grapefruit-sized yellow target center that’s about 70 metres away.
“This is just the first round, so I will not get too excited by it,” said Im, who doesn’t wear glasses.
The South Korean team also broke the world record, scoring 2,087 points with 216 arrows. The South Koreans set the previous world record, 2,069, in Turkey in May.
The team’s coach, Jang Young Sool, said he will prepare the team for its next test.
“We will have a day of rest now and prepare for tomorrow,” he said of the gold medal match today.
France, China and the US — which was No. 1 coming into the event — finished behind the South Koreans in that order.
Brady Ellison, world’s top-ranked individual archer, said the conditions were ideal yesterday and he wasn’t surprised the individual world record fell.
“I don’t think you get those type of scores anywhere if the weather wasn’t just perfect today,” he said. “Korea shoots good, and if you look at the scores, they’re always top in the ranking round.”
The US men’s team beat South Korea last October in London.
Also yesterday, the American women’s team scored a surprising second-place finish in the ranking round. Miranda Leek, Jennifer Nichols and Khatuna Lorig scored 1,979 points with 216 arrows on Friday. They were 14 points behind South Korea, which scored 1,993 points.
Lorig, competing in her fifth Olympics, finished fourth in the individual ranking round with 669 points on 72 arrows. She trailed archers from South Korea and Chinese Taipei, all tied at 671 points.
Today, archery was to present its first medals in men’s team competition, part of a blockbuster 19-sport schedule on the first full day of competition.
One of the biggest events today will be the men’s cycling road race featuring Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins and world champion Mark Cavendish, who could help give Britain its first gold medal of the games.
“It’s a dream team,” Cavendish said. “We’ve got the first and second of the Tour de France, four guys who won stages at the Tour de France, the British champion, four guys incredibly motivated, four guys incredibly patriotic, incredibly loyal to each other.”
Other sports included women’s basketball — featuring the gold medal-favorite United States against Croatia and perennial silver medalists Australia against Britain, and preliminary women’s beach volleyball at the Horse Guards Parade.
At the Aquatics Centre, Australian Stephanie Rice hoped to repeat her 400-metre individual medley gold medal from Beijing. Other sports included men’s bantamweight and middleweight boxing, the dressage portion of three-day eventing in equestrian, fencing, gymnastics, judo, rowing at Windsor outside London, shooting, table tennis, handball and tennis at Wimbledon.