Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #135 - An San

An San

South Korea

Archery

Overall Ranks

#3 among Archers

#2 among Korean Olympians

#2 among Korean archers

#1 among Female archers

Olympic Results

2020

Women Individual - Gold

Women Team - Gold

Mixed Team - Gold

Total

Events - 3

Gold - 3

An San was born in Gwangju, South Korea on February 27, 2001. She made her first international appearance in 2017 at the World Youth Championship, where she contributed to a team silver medal. By 2019, she was competing in the Archery World Cup, where she took first place in both the individual and team events.

She made the South Korean Olympic archery team for the 2020 Olympics, which is a feat in itself, and when the athletes finally made their way to Tokyo in 2021, An dominated the competition. She first competed in the mixed pairs event with Kim Je-Deok, and they entered the event as the #1 seed, then coasted to the final match, where they defeated the Netherlands 5-3 after falling behind 2-0 in the first set. She also notably shot a "Robin Hood arrow" during the semifinal, in which her arrow split her teammate's previously shot arrow.

Next up was the women's team event, which South Korea had never lost in their history, and there was no change there. The Korean trio obliterated all competition, only giving up one single point in the entire tournament as they coasted to another gold medal.

The final event was the individual women's event. She entered the Olympics ranked #5 in the world, but she set an Olympic record in the preliminary round, scoring 680 points on 72 shots. She didn't face a challenge until the round of 16, where she beat Ren Hayakawa of Japan 6-4. She beat her semifinal opponent 6-5, advancing to the final, where she beat Yelena Osipova of Russia on a tiebreak shot to take the gold.

By winning that event, An became the first archer in history to win 3 gold medals in the same Olympic games. Since 2021, she has continued to compete as one of the top archers in the world, but she fell just short of making the Korean team for the 2024 Olympics. She came back to win gold in the Archery World Cup in 2025, and hasn't ruled out another run at the Olympics in 2028, but either way, she is already one of the greatest Olympians of all time.