Park Sung-hyun

2008 Summer Olympics

Heading into the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing Park was favoured to defend her Olympic titles. She and her teammate Yun Ok-hee were named as the favourites to take the women's individual gold medal, and the South Korean team were highly tipped to retain their women's team title for a sixth consecutive Olympic Games. Park began by scoring 673 points in the ranking round for the women's individual event, concluding the round in first place and equalling the existing Olympic record set by Ukraine's Lina Herasymenko at the 1996 Summer Olympics. With a combined tally of 2,004 points, Park, Yun, and Joo Hyun-jung also achieved a new Olympic record for the women's team event. The trio went on to defeat Italy, France, and China in succession to take a sixth successive Olympic title in the women's team competition.

Park was also successful in progressing to her second Olympic women's individual final. Her opponent was China's Zhang Juanjuan, who had finished the ranking round in twenty-seventh position and had earlier eliminated Park's teammates Yun and Joo en route to the gold medal match. The match marked the third time the pair had met in an Olympic final after contesting the last two finals of the women's team event. In a close match Zhang defeated Park one point, becoming the first archer from outside South Korea to win the women's individual title in twenty-four years and breaking what was then the sixth-longest Olympic winning streak.

World Championships Park contested every edition of the biennial World Archery Championships from 2001 to 2007, winning a medal in each of her four appearances. She became the women's recurve world champion at the age of eighteen in 2001,

Park was joined by Lee Sung-jin and Lee Tuk-young for the 2005 Championships in Madrid. The South Korean team was dominant once more, winning the gold medal in all four recurve competitions for the first time since 1997. Park, Lee, and Lee retained the women's team title with victory over Ukraine, though a semi-final loss to Lee Sung-jin eliminated Park from gold medal contention in women's individual event. Park later defeated Natalia Valeeva of Italy to win the bronze medal.

Asian Games Park competed at the 2002 Asian Games, where she won a gold medal in the team event. At the 2006 Asian Games in Doha Park achieved two gold medals. Her first came in the women's individual event, where she defeated compatriot Yun Ok-hee in the final to claim her first individual title at the Games. Park's second gold medal was won in the women's team event where she, Yun, and Yun Mi-jin defeated China to win a third consecutive title for South Korea, setting a new Asian Games record for a 24-arrow match in the process. Afterwards Park said she felt greater satisfaction in winning the team event and expressed joy that the tournament was over in light of the pressure placed upon the South Korean team.

Records At the 2004 Summer Olympics Park set a new world record for the women's 72-arrow round with 682 points from a maximum of 720. Her score would remain unbroken for almost eleven years before her compatriot Ki Bo-bae scored 686 points during the Summer Universiade in July 2015. At the 2008 Olympics Park scored an Olympic-record 115 points from a possible 120 for the 12-arrow match, a tally matched hours later by Zhang Juanjuan, her eventual opponent in the gold medal match.

Park was the first recurve archer to break the 1,400-point barrier in the 144-arrow round after posting a total of 1,405 points in October 2004. She remained the only archer to achieve this feat for almost fifteen years before compatriot Ryoo Su Jung scored 1,400 points at a national tournament in South Korea in July 2019.