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Marcus D’Almeida named World Archery’s best athlete of 2023

4 February 2024

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

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Marcus D’Almeida has been named World Archery’s best athlete of 2023 as India’s first individual World Archery Champion Aditi Swami and the national team’s instrumental new trainer Sergio Pagni also collected honours during the Indoor Archery World Series Finals in Las Vegas.

Swami was named breakthrough athlete of the year and Pagni coach of the year.

D’Almeida won the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in 2023, finished third at the world championships and spent most of the year ranked number one in the world after securing the top spot in the Sanlida World Archery Rankings for the first time in his career in late February.

“Number one of the world, for me, was a place I’d always dreamed of. It’s something I’d look at and think that, one day, I’d be there,” he said after the announcement. “Now I am. And I’m very happy.”

“But I also know that it’s an achievement of the past, and I need to keep working, keep training.”

Marcus receiving top honours in the World Archery Awards comes exactly 10 seasons since he was named World Archery’s first breakthrough athlete of the year – back in 2014.

He is now the fourth athlete to collect the overall trophy. The previous winners were Brady Ellison (2011), Mariana Avitia (2012) and Ella Gibson (2022). The award was retired from 2013 to 2021 in favour of only choosing division winners.

India collected the highest total number of awards in this year’s programme with three, having already seen impressive armless teenager Sheetal Devi named the best para woman of 2023.

The country accrued unprecedented success last season, crowning its first two individual world champions in Berlin – Swami and Pravin Deotale – and dominating competition at both the World Archery Youth Championships and the all-important Asian Games, knocking Korea off the top spot in the medal table for the first time in 45 years.

Former Italian international Pagni joined the Indian team to coach its compounds at the start of the season – and is credited with uncovering the squad’s outstanding results.

“It’s a culmination of an amazing season and working with such a big group of talented guys is such an honour for me,” he said after the announcement in Las Vegas. “We cleaned all our targets [this season] and we’re very happy about it.”

D’Almeida featured in the arena twice on the night, coming second to Brady Ellison in the recurve men’s gold medal match at the Indoor Archery World Series Finals and collecting the second major 18-metre result of his career after taking bronze in Nimes two weeks ago.

He will enter the upcoming Olympic season as the number one ranked recurve man in the world.