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Denmark triumphs in milestone compound mixed team final at Chengdu 2025

8 August 2025

Chengdu, China

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Denmark’s Mathias Fullerton and Sofie Louise Dam Marcussen won the compound mixed team title at the Chengdu 2025 World Games, beating Mexico 156-155 on the stage in Qinglong Lake Park.

It was a high-quality encounter, but one where the Mexican pair of Andrea Becerra and Sebastian Garcia could not quite find enough consistency and momentum to challenge the strong Danish effort.

“It feels amazing,” said Marcussen. “I couldn’t have dreamt of more. Really, really nice.”

“I feel like we’ve shot a few mixed team events where we didn’t really show what we were capable of, and we did in here. We had a great team spirit. I know Mathias had got my back.”

Both Becerra and Garcia dropped a point each in the first end, while the Danes shot clean. It seemed to set the tone; neither looked completely comfortable again, even after a Marcussen nine in the second end nudged the door back open.

In the third end, Mexico went two behind again, and the match had slipped away.

For Becerra, it was still an improvement on the result at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, where her and Miguel Becerra had beaten Denmark (consisting of Fullerton and Tanja Gellenthien), but then lost to India in the bronze medal match.

”It’s a lot more pressure to shoot for the gold,” said Becerra. ”But I’m really proud of the silver and happy I get to do it with a close friend.”

Fullerton had been the most rock solid of anchors for Denmark, not missing the 10-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+.