Brady Ellison: It’s not over yet, and the timing feels right

“I’ve really felt good this back half of the year,” said Brady Ellison after winning the Nanjing 2025 Hyundai Archery World Cup Final, defeating the same opponent – Marcus D’Almeida – he beat at Lausanne 2014, 11 years earlier.

That was his third World Cup Final victory, following Edinburgh 2010 and Istanbul 2011. Then came Odense 2016 and Moscow 2019. Now, Nanjing is added to the list. Only Sara Lopez has more final titles – nine!

“I didn’t have any expectations coming in,” Ellison added. “I just wanted to stick to my game plan and keep the timing I had today. I actually felt like I shot very well, and my semifinal match against Mete [Gazoz] was one of the best I’ve had in years.”

Brady and Mete, along with many other internationals, had spent the preceding weeks shooting and bonding at the Archery Premier League in India. Yet the win still came as a surprise. Or was it?

Ellison had performed well enough outdoors to maintain his high world ranking, which qualified him for the Final, but he exited at the quarterfinal stage at all four World Cup stages this season – losing in Central Florida to Gazoz, in Shanghai to Baptiste Addis, in Madrid to Matias Grande and in Antalya to Buianto Tsyrendorzhiev.

But, as so often, just when it seems Brady is off form, down and out, with no chance whatsoever – suddenly he turns up snarling, at the very peak of his ability.

Like in Paris. 

At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Ellison’s performance in Friday’s mixed team final, where he secured bronze alongside Casey Kaufhold, felt like an early warning. The composure was unmistakable. Something was in the air.

Almost no-one had him pencilled in as a real contender beforehand – not even him, after a largely underwhelming outdoor season, made even more complicated by a significant change to his draw length introduced barely three weeks earlier.

“If you had told me three weeks ago that I’d be standing on a podium, I would have said you were high,” Ellison himself said afterwards.

But when he turned up on the practice field, heads and binoculars started to turn. Perhaps only he could have engineered that turnaround – a convergence of experience, resilience and timing.

We know the rest: he slashed through the field on the way to what most agree was the greatest men’s final ever seen at an Olympic Games. It hardly seemed fair that such a heavyweight contest was decided by a handful of millimetres between his arrows and Kim Woojin’s in the shoot-off.

In the process, Brady became the most decorated U.S. Olympic archer of all time by medal count – an extraordinary achievement, reached not through bravado but through maturity and perspective.

We have, of course, seen many different Bradys over his long career, and 2026 will mark 20 years since his international debut.

You may remember his performances in 2010 and 2011, when he dominated the World Cup circuit like no one before – or since.

You might also recall the wilderness years in 2017 and 2018, when a series of high-profile exits from major competitions and injury struggles saw him angrily threaten – more than once – to hang up his recurve and return to the compound bow he started with as a youth.

But the Brady who bounced back in 2019 hit an extraordinary level of shooting, culminating in early 2020 when he became the first man to shoot 900 with a recurve in Vegas.

Many have speculated he might have been favourite for the Tokyo Olympics if they had taken place that year, but of course the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything.

We’ve seen a lot of Bradys. Have we finally encountered the ‘final boss’ Brady – a professional shooting essentially for fun?

Ellison just closed out 2025 with a superb indoor final win against Thomas Chirault at the inaugural Rio Indoor 250 circuit event, with just a single 30 in the first end separating the two.

“You’ve just got to control your thoughts”, he said, asked for his ‘secret’ afterwards. “I think that’s the biggest secret out there – one that no one really wants to do or put the time in for.”

Perhaps this 37-year-old Brady – a man who has tattooed his motto ‘Keep Driving’ across his wrists – finally has his future in the sport figured out.

With an eye on at least one more Olympic Games at LA28 – which would be his sixth, making him the fourth archer ever, alongside Alison Williamson, Ilario Di Buò and Natalia Valeeva, to compete at six Games – the path ahead at the end of 2025 appears remarkably clear.

“I’m just going to go home, start working on things I figured out here that I want to do a little differently, and see how it goes,” he concluded.