Archery: South Koreans make it four team golds in a row

South Korea extended their dominance of Olympic women's team archery on Friday, winning their fourth straight gold medal in the team event.

The team of Kim Soo-nyung, Kim Nam-soon and new Olympic individual champion Yun Mi-jin defeated Ukraine by 251 points to 239 in the final at the Sydney Games.

The victory gave Kim Soo-nyung, back after seven years of retirement, a fourth Olympic gold and the team's total of 502 for the 54 arrows shot over the semifinal and final was a new world record.

The bronze medal went to Germany, who defeated Turkey by 240 points to 234 in a play-off.

South Korea's victory maintained their record of having won the women's team event at every Olympics since it was introduced to the Games in 1988.

The South Korean archers had a lead of just a point after the first end of nine arrows, three shot by each team member.

But they pulled ahead to lead by four after the second end, thanks partly to two maximum 10-point shots from Yun. The Ukrainians -- Olena Sadovnycha, Nataliya Burdeyna and Kateryna Serdyuk -- faltered to fall further behind in the final end.

The win completed a perfect Olympics for the South Korean women. Kim Nam-soon and Kim Soo-nyung took silver and bronze respectively behind Yun in the individual event on Tuesday.

"Korea's women's archery has always been good and we've always achieved a lot at Olympic Games," said Kim Soo-nyung, struggling to explain the country's extraordinary success.

"We do a lot of practising," she offered finally. "And people's trust in us also helps us to perform very well."

Kim Soo-nyung now has six Olympic medals -- individual and team golds in Seoul in 1988, and team golds in Barcelona in 1992 and now Sydney. Apart from her individual bronze earlier this week, she took a silver in Barcelona.

Ukraine's archers were somewhat stumped when asked what it would take to beat the South Koreans.

"All we can do is aim towards achieving equally good results" Sadovnycha said.

"We were prepared for the fact that the Korean team is extremely strong. Unfortunately our performance wasn't all that we'd hoped it would be. But we're still very pleased."

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