Fullerton had been the most rock solid of anchors for Denmark, not missing the ten ring in the finals until the very last arrow of all, which dropped into the nine.
“I could hear the crowd was thinking ‘can he hit them all?’ but we didn’t have that much time left and I knew a nine was good enough, so I sent an okay shot which I know is gonna hit the nine instead of risking it and maybe you’re running out of time.”
This competition set the stage for something much bigger; the debut of the compound mixed team competition at the LA28 Olympic Games in three years, and the Danish compound elite are itching to be a part of it. “The Olympics opens up so many things for funding and stuff like that,” said Fullerton.
“And now we’ve really proved that we can do it. Denmark is a small country, but one of the best there is. So I’m super happy that we got to show it here.”
The USA’s Curtis Broadnax and Alexis Ruiz took the mixed team bronze medal with a score of 157-155 over the youthful Korean team of Yeeun Moon and Lee Eunho, notably coached by recurve legend Im Dong Hyun. Korea had pushed out favourites India in the quarters before being steamrollered by Denmark in the semifinal.
On the big stage, Korea were in the driver‘s seat for most of the match, but the USA found their rhythm to clean the last two ends before Eunho, under time pressure, delivered a terrible arrow low into the eight ring to hand the USA the medal.
The competition continues with the individual compound finals on Saturday. You can watch this and all finals from this week on archery+.
