Nicholas D’Amour successfully defended his lead from the opening end to edge world number two Marcus D’Almeida and claim the recurve men’s gold medal at the San Cristobal 2025 Pan American Field Archery Championships in Mexico.
The US archer’s finest shooting came early, landing two of his five sixths in the first three arrows to take a 17-14 lead – the intense humidity in the southern Mexican woods doing little to slow his strong start.
D’Almeida responded by outscoring his opponent in the next two ends, 17-16 and 15-14, but as field archery uses cumulative scoring in recurve – unlike target archery – D’Amour held a narrow 47-46 advantage heading into the final end.
The Brazilian, runner-up at this year’s World Archery Championships, needed to make up a single point to force a shoot-off. But brutally, just as in Gwangju last month, where he lost gold to Andres Temiño Mediel in a shoot-off, he came agonisingly close again. The pair tied the final end, 15-15, and D’Amour sealed victory, 62-61.
Sunday’s win marked D’Amour’s first individual international gold in field archery – and redemption after Iguazú 2023, the inaugural edition of the Pan American Field Championships, where he surrendered an early lead to Luis Alvarez in the final.
Now 24, and with another two years of top-level experience behind him, D’Amour kept his composure under the bright Chiapas sun and heavy humidity to secure one of nine gold medals for the USA across the senior individual and team events over the weekend.
Defeating a top-ranked opponent like D’Almeida was, as he put it, “the cherry on top.”
