Why is this event called a ‘Robin Hood’? As with so much attached to or named after the 13th century English outlaw, including his very existence, it is something added on after the fact – in this case, a fictional 19th century legend about splitting an arrow on the target face added by the author Sir Walter Scott. (People also argue about whether it should be called a Robin Hood if you hit one of your own arrows, or whether, like in Tokyo, you hit someone else’s.)
The chances of a Robin Hood even happening in a 70-metre recurve competition are extremely rare, especially as both archers were using Easton X10 arrows, which are ‘barrelled’ (the end is thinner than the centre). George Tekmitchov, the engineer who designed the X10, made a calculation that An San’s shot must have been no more than 0.2mm away from the dead centre of Kim Je Deok’s arrow – and almost perfectly aligned.
“I said sorry to him afterwards,” An San joked during an interview after the Games, calling it the highlight of a competition that she would ultimately go on to dominate.
But it was a moment of metaphor as much as anything else: the rarity, the perfection, and the subtler, symbolic demonstration that there was no discernible difference between the skill of the man and the woman in the pairing.
