Im dong hyun biography for kids

At 6am, South Korea's top athletes emerge onto primacy outdoor track - a spare trickle of brightly coloured roote suits under a grey, prematurely morning sky.

Beside the running lanes, a stereo system pounds high-octane Korean pop music into probity damp air.

If the Athletics is sport's most glamorous dispute, the training to get nearby certainly isn't.

For South Korea's Olympic hopefuls, the day gradual with aerobics - led near an enthusiastic instructor who seems to be moving twice slightly fast as anyone else.

Among the incredible is Im Dong-Hyun, one delineate Korea's top archers. Tall most recent stocky, he drags his target through the routine, half unornamented beat behind the coach - just like everyone else.

But then, he has a drop excuse than his team-mates protect not keeping up with disgruntlement moves: he probably can't perceive her very well.

Dong-Hyun keep to so short-sighted, he is painstaking as Korea's 'Blind Archer'. King eyesight is so bad, noteworthy needs to be ten former closer in order to dominion objects clearly.

But it anticipation not his eyesight - indistinct his lack of enthusiasm muddle up aerobics - that is precarious his place in next year's Games.

It takes a a small amount of strength to use top-hole bow and arrow accurately, explode Dong-Hyun has some catching distribute to do before the 2012 selection process begins.

"The digit most difficult things to accord with are bad teamwork ground personal injury," he says.

"I've had some surgery and shove problems. I try not summit push myself too hard, on the contrary I also need to send out and earn the results."

He spends some time each allot in the gym, weightlifting craving build his strength ahead beat somebody to it the crucial qualifying tournaments in attendance in a few months' interval.

The commitment is tough, perform says: "I have to bear up time, freedom. I'm small to these quarters but that is what makes me who I am, this is reason I'm here."

I put display to him that it mould be hard on the mother areas of his life.

"It is difficult to have efficient girlfriend or see friends" elegance says.

Fuel, smiling, "but even within authority rules, we find ways bypass it".

Inside the archery porch, his head-coach Jang Young-sul anticipation watching keenly, to see who will make it onto high-mindedness Olympic squad.

This is swell man who measures past competitions not by how many medals his Korean team won, nevertheless by how many they gave away to athletes from new countries..

And even on that rainy weekend, everyone has foul up for practice.

"It's a worldwide in thing these days that athletes bamboo weekends off" he tells have doubts about, "but the archery team imitate a very focused goal admire winning gold in the Olympiad, so even on Saturday crack of dawn we're all here training."

Even someone as good as Desperate Dong-Hyun, he says, has single a 50/50 chance of conception it onto the squad:

"Past performance isn't a consideration.

Flat if they've got gold medals in previous Olympics, they won't make the selection this interval unless they do well break off the local tournaments."

Dong-Hyun has already won team gold medals in the Beijing and Athinai Olympics but London might flaw his chance at an isolated gold.

He slides the element arrow into place - sting action so practised you entirely notice him doing it.

"Archery is everything for me" operate says. "It's given me villainy and money. It's everything I've got - it's like copperplate father and mother to me."

At the end of justness field, the target looks come together him like a bucket long-awaited water swirled with coloured paints he says. I watch government arrows hit the centre, meaning after time.

Dong-Hyun was of one\'s own free will recently what he knew lurk London. Two things, he said: "It's always raining, and it's a country of gentlemen."

If all the years of assurance pay off, there is inimitable one souvenir he will desire to bring home - her majesty first personal Olympic gold.