Anime tattoos, 60-hour gaming marathons, and Olympic gold — the fascinating world of archer Mete Gazoz

It’s fair to say Mete Gazoz enjoyed his first visit to India earlier this month. He was in the country to participate in the Archery Premier League, a 10-day, team-based competition, but still found time to visit historic monuments, browse malls, and sample local cuisine. Mete did well in the League, too. His team, the Rajputana Royals, went on to win the inaugural season. Long before he lifted the trophy, though, fans at New Delhi’s Yamuna Sports Complex were already getting the 26-year-old to perform his trademark victory celebration.

You’d think Mete would tire of it, especially when fans asked him to do it right after training, but he indulged them every time, theatrically raising his right hand before clenching it in front of his face. Mete says he’s used to the unusual request.

While Yusuf Dikec’s nonchalant pistol-shooting pose became a viral sensation at the Paris Olympics, Mete was the original Turkish precision athlete to have a viral Olympic moment.

Mete’s gesture was iconic on its own, but it was the fact that he pulled it off moments after winning men’s singles gold, Turkey’s first Olympic gold in archery, that made him a breakout star back home.

“My life really changed after that gold medal,” he tells Sportstar. “For a few months, it was crazy. It’s a bit easier now, but if I ever wear the national-team T-shirt, people are going to be looking at me or asking to take my picture. It’s not the worst thing. But it’s made me a bit more discreet. I tend to walk a little faster so people can’t catch up to me, and if I’m at a restaurant, I can quickly figure out who recognises me, so I’ll sit facing away from them,” he says.

Mete has found a way not to be burdened by the expectations that come with success. He’s learned to channel the pressure that accompanies Olympic glory into composure and focus on the range.

Old promise

For a long time, the pose was thought to be inspired by his love of anime. Gazoz has multiple tattoos of characters from One Piece, but the real story is much simpler.

“I made my international debut for the senior Turkey team when I was 14. At that time, one of my teammates and I decided that if either of us ever won a world title, we’d do this pose. It was just something silly we decided together. When I first won a World Cup title (the 2018 World Cup Final), I decided to fulfil that promise. A lot of people think I’m paying tribute to something in anime, but there’s only a very simple story behind it,” he says.

Simple as it is, that origin story says something about Mete: even at 14, coming from a country with little Olympic archery pedigree, he already believed he would be a world champion someday.

“I think my best quality is my confidence. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had it. When people ask me whether I was afraid of playing the Koreans or competing at the highest level, it’s always strange to me because I never had any fear about these things,” he says.

Rising force: Turkiye’s archery trio (L-R) Abdullah Yildirmis, Berkim Tumer and Mete Gazoz celebrate their team bronze at Paris 2024, their smiles reflecting a nation’s quiet ascent in the sport. 
| Photo Credit:
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Supreme confidence

That confidence, perhaps, stems from more than his time on the range. While archery came easily to him, Mete has lived with a painful stammer that makes communication difficult, as his body sometimes spasms involuntarily.

“It’s a strange thing, my stammer,” he says. “It’s like when I think a lot and want to speak really fast, my brain can’t keep up. It’s sometimes really difficult for me to speak. I don’t like public speaking for this reason. When I was young, my family took me to a lot of doctors and speech therapists. Finally, I gave up because I decided, ‘I’m fine the way I am. I’m happy with this. I don’t care what other kids say.’ I’ve never been one to care what people think. Even as a child, I was independent. My thinking was always: I don’t care what you think about me. My theory has always been that if someone can’t wait for me to complete my sentence, then I don’t have time for them either,” he says.

Mete says his stammer was less of a problem than his last name. “In Turkey, Gazoz (Uludağ Gazoz) is actually a very famous fizzy drink. It literally means gassy. As a kid, everyone made fun of my name more than anything!” he says.

The one place where Mete, born and raised in Istanbul’s Sarıyer neighbourhood, truly felt at home was the archery range. “I think the range was my real home. My father was an archer and later a coach, and my mother also used to shoot. All my earliest memories are about archery. I grew up going to competitions and knew all the archers long before I became a serious one. I’ve always loved archery, shooting, watching, and just being around people when they were shooting. That was my home,” he says.

Archery, he adds, simply made sense. “What I like most about archery is that there’s no real chance for cheating. Outside of the smallest local events, it’s very clear what you’ve shot. I felt it’s the fairest sport in the world, and because of that, most archers are very easy to get along with,” he says.

While it was perhaps inevitable that Mete would become an archer, he tried several other sports. “I played all sorts of sports. I was actually a pretty good pistol shooter. I still shoot for fun. After the Tokyo Olympics, I shot a round of 572 in practice, which isn’t far off Olympic qualification. Maybe if I’d chosen to be an air-pistol shooter, it might have been me rather than Dikec at the Olympics! But I always knew I was going to be an archer,” he says.

Early rise

Mete, who began competing in archery at seven, was taking part in senior events by 12, made his first national team at 14, won individual silver at the European Championships at 16, and competed in his first Olympics, at Rio de Janeiro, a few months later, where he lost in the round of 32 to eventual fourth-place finisher Sjef van den Berg of the Netherlands.

All the while, he was refining his technique. At 1.82 m tall, Mete’s long arms limit the draw weight he can handle. The higher the draw weight, the faster (and theoretically more accurate) the arrow. He currently uses a 53-pound bow, lighter than the 55 used by India’s Dhiraj Bommadevara and far less than the 58 of London Olympic champion Mauro Nespoli. Though his lighter draw means he can take slightly longer to line up, he’s actually one of the fastest shooters at the world level.

His breakthrough came at the 2018 World Cup Final in Berlin, where he beat future Korean Olympic champion Lee Woo Seok, a performance that earned him his first of three World Archery Player of the Year awards.

That result made him a top contender for Tokyo 2020, a responsibility Mete handled superbly. Since then, he has remained consistent at major events, winning individual golds at the 2023 World Championships and 2024 European Championships, followed by a team bronze in Paris, each celebrated with his trademark pose.

Gaming marathoner

A life devoted to archery has meant some compromises. “I realised early that I couldn’t go to school like other children because I’d usually be training or competing. So I mostly studied at home and went to school only for exams. I was a smart kid, and I sometimes wish I’d studied engineering or something, but even that was because I wanted to understand the technology behind the bow,” he says.

Though archery is his first passion, Mete has others too. His love for anime began when, as a bored 14-year-old at a national camp, he needed something to watch. “I’m a fan of a lot of different shows. I’m currently a fan of One Piece, but before that, I was into Demon Slayer, Baki, Seven Deadly Sins, and Fairy Tail. I think I’ve watched 20 episodes in one go at times,” he says.

But his second-greatest passion might be video games. “Sometimes when archery gets too much, I relax by playing video games, but then I end up getting obsessed. There have been times when, if I don’t have practice that day, I’ll play for 14 or 15 hours and get maybe three hours of sleep. My record was staying up 60 hours straight playing League of Legends. My excuse was that it was during the COVID pandemic when we weren’t sure the Tokyo Olympics would happen. People later joked that my secret for winning gold was staying up three days gaming. The truth is, once I realised the Olympics were back on, I focused again on archery,” he says.

For now, Mete remains focused on his sport. For all the medals he has won, he isn’t done yet. “There are still a lot of medals I want. I want to win an Olympic team gold and the mixed-team gold.

I haven’t won those yet. I don’t think I’m very far from it. It’s all a matter of one arrow,” he says. And when that moment comes, he’ll bring out his trademark celebration again. “That won’t change. I’ll always do that,” he says.

Published on Nov 07, 2025