Turkish archer Mete Gazoz won a gold medal in the men’s recurve category at the Essen 2024 European Outdoor Championships, becoming the European champion for the first time in his life and he also became the first archer ever to hold three major accomplishments at once, with this achievements being the Olympics, World and Europe championships and wrote his name in the history.
On Sunday, 12 May, he defeated his Slovenian opponent Den Habjan Malavasic 6-0 in the finals to win the European championship.
Before this success, he had become both world and Olympiad champions. Moreover, during his career, he has won a total of 51 medals with 21 of them being gold. Despite his huge success, he is still very young at only 24 years old, so Turkish fans are expecting even more medals and achievements from him in the future.
Mete Gazoz started his archery journey at a young age at the Istanbul Archery Youth and Sports Club. He then made his international debut in 2013, just at the age of 16, representing Türkiye at 2015 European Games in Baku. He received a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, which was held in the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was Türkiye’s first ever Olympic medal in the discipline of archery, so his success was resounding and he became the pride of Türkiye.
After his previous achievements he said “Today I was the best archer on this planet. I will be the best from now on,” making the hopes of Turkish fans rise even higher for the future successes.
His nation’s pride, Mete Gazoz, was named the best men's recurve archer for 2023 by the World Archery Federation in its annual poll as well.