The lowdown on American archer Mackenzie Brown: She knits, line dances, used to be a competitive swimmer \u2014 backstroke was her specialty \u2014 and shoots arrows while listening to country music to hone her concentration.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s this: The 21-year-old from Flint, Texas, may just be the archer to interrupt the dominance of South Korea, the nation that\u2019s captured seven of the last eight Olympic gold medals in the women\u2019s individual event heading into Rio.<\/p>\n
Brown certainly has the aim to pull off the feat \u2014 the poise, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I go in with the right amount of confidence, I\u2019m usually going to do really well,\u201d said Brown, who\u2019s attempting to become the first U.S. woman to win Olympic gold since Luann Ryon in 1976. \u201cI\u2019m my biggest competitor when it comes to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown took third at a Rio test event last September at the Sambadrome venue, the iconic stadium designed for the Samba Parade at Carnival. She finished behind winner Choi Misun of South Korea and runner-up Tan Ya-Ting of Chinese Taipei.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The stadium) is really catching to the eye,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a really good venue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown will be the lone American woman competing in Rio after teammates Khatuna Lorig and Hye Youn Park narrowly missed making the Olympic squad. Lorig is a big name in archery circles for what\u2019s she\u2019s accomplished \u2014 she was trying to make her sixth Olympic team \u2014 and for being the one who enhanced the archery skills of actor Jennifer Lawrence for her role as Katniss Everdeen in \u201cThe Hunger Games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going to do my best and feel like that\u2019s going to earn me a medal,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
She grew up a swimmer before being introduced to archery in middle school. From the start, she was talented \u2014 winning tournaments in divisions above her age.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in deep Texas, where all I heard of was bow hunting. I had this image of the movie \u2018Robin Hood: Men in Tights.\u2019 That\u2019s what I knew about archery,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSoon, I found out it was so much more. It was something I definitely have a passion for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Typically, she will train to music in order to work on tuning out distractions. When she\u2019s not listening to country stars like Garth Brooks or George Strait, she\u2019s jamming to Meghan Trainor.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to push that (noise) away and focus on what I need to focus on, it becomes a benefit,\u201d explained Brown, whose hobby is knitting and makes garments to protect her equipment while traveling. \u201cI\u2019m just really looking forward to how things turn out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The archery competition starts Aug. 5. Here are some things to know:<\/p>\n
\nInside scoop<\/strong><\/p>\n Archery targets are set up 70 meters away \u2014 about three-fourths of an American football field \u2014 and feature 10 rings with different point values and colors. For scoring purposes, remember this: Gold is great. White, not as much, and missing altogether even worse.<\/p>\n Korean command<\/strong><\/p>\n The South Koreans have such a deep archery program that defending men\u2019s individual champion Oh Jin-Hyek didn\u2019t make the squad. Also missing from the team is visually impaired archer Im Dong-hyun, who helped the country to a bronze medal in the team event at the 2012 London Games. On the women\u2019s side, Ki Bo-Bae will defend her gold. The South Korean women have also won every gold in the team event since it was included in 1988.<\/p>\n Brazilian hope <\/strong><\/p>\n Teenager Marcus D\u2019Almeida of Brazil is sometimes referred to as \u201cArchery\u2019s Neymar,\u201d because his quick rise to stardom \u2014 much like the soccer great. D\u2019Almeida will be one of the host country\u2019s top medal contenders. The 18-year-old captured a silver medal at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games in 2014.<\/p>\n American might<\/strong><\/p>\n The American men have a full team in Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminski and Zach Garrett. Ellison and Kaminski led the U.S. to a silver medal in the team competition at the London Olympics.<\/p>\n Quite an achievement<\/strong><\/p>\n Zahra Nemati of Iran is scheduled to compete in both the Rio Olympics and Paralympics. The 31-year-old Zahra earned a black belt in taekwondo before she injured her spinal cord in an accident in 2004, according to her profile on Paralympic.org. She took up archery soon after and captured gold at the 2012 London Paralympics in the individual recurve W1\/W2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The lowdown on American archer Mackenzie Brown: She knits, line dances, used to be a competitive swimmer \u2014 backstroke was her specialty \u2014 and shoots arrows while listening to country music to hone her concentration. Then there\u2019s this: The 21-year-old from Flint, Texas, may just be the archer to interrupt the dominance of South Korea, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":1976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}