Martin Damsbo ended a 10-year individual medal drought at World Cups to reach the compound men final four at Shanghai 2026 – stage two of the 2026 circuit.
The Paris 2013 Archery World Cup Final champion – who has represented Denmark every year on archery’s premier international circuit since the opening season in 2006 – was one of three shoot-off winners in the compound men’s quarter-finals, with Sahil Rajesh Jadhav, Nicolas Girard and Sebastian Garcia Flores progressing to Saturday’s stage. France’s Girard was the sole archer from the discipline to go through via five ends beating Bangladesh’s Aishwarzo Rahman 147-145.
Damsbo and Kushal Dalal of India couldn’t be separated at 147 apiece after 15 arrows in an overcast Shanghai and mirrored each other’s scores in three of the five ends, with the former taking the lead in the second end before the latter equalised proceedings in the fourth by shooting a 30 to the Dane’s 29.
“It was a hard day to be old out there today, I think… I feel like it,” said the 40-year-old archer whose 10 in the shootoff was closest to the all important centre spot. “It’s great to be back. We’ve had a lot of team matches, a lot of team medals and medal matches, so we always feel like we haven’t left there. But still, to get a foot in the door to play myself, that’s fine.”
“The level is just so high. It’s not enough to shoot good. You also need to have a little bit of luck. The level these days compared to many years ago… when you shot good before, you won.”
“Here, you need to shoot good and have that little piece of luck to keep going. Even in the shoot-off here, when I shot a good shot, it felt good, and I caught an X-liner, and I’m like, ‘Okay, it at least has the potential to win,’ because the level is normally just pounding them, so I was really happy to see that was enough.”
The result for Damsbo is an achievement a long time in the making, but also one that reflects the factor prioritised most by archers: consistency.
