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Paige Pearce wins third consecutive title at world field championships

23 September 2024

Lac la Biche, Canada

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The compound women’s podium at the world field championships.

Archers from the USA collected wins in three of the six senior individual events at the 2024 World Archery Field Championships as Paige Pearce extended her hold on the compound women’s title to three editions in a row today in Lac la Biche (Canada).

Olympic runner-up Brady Ellison and Fawn Girard were the States’ other winners.

Compound men’s world number one Mike Schloesser (Netherlands), Cesar Vera Bringas (Spain) and Roberta Di Francesco (Italy) also topped the senior podium, as the Italians led the overall medal table, which also included the under-21 and team events.

Having pace the field throughout marked qualifying on Wednesday and the subsequent eliminations, Pearce’s 66-62 point win over Amanda Mlinaric in the final was yet more proof of her dominance in this discipline.

She cleaned the first target – a 40-centimetre face at the maximum 30 metres – with three perfect sixes and never let Mlinaric back into the match.

“It feels pretty good,” she said afterwards. “I wanted to come out here and clean [the whole course] but I dropped a couple.”

Pearce won the world field in 2018 and 2022, both times beating Toja Ellison.

Pearce wasn’t the only field archer in Lac la Biche looking to build their legacy.

Five-time champion Erik Jonsson made yet another final in the barebow men’s competition – and his shot at a sixth title came down to a single-arrow tiebreak.

Jonsson found the four. Sixty-one-year-old Cesar Vera hit middle.

“I’m flying. It’s impossible to touch the floor now,” said the Spaniard, who becomes only the second winner from the country in the 55-year history of this event, after Sebastian Juanola in 2012.

“I felt nerves during the shoot-off. I had a lot of noise in my mind but I have a good mindset and I just try to follow my process all the time…. I said wait, hold the back tension and follow your process, and finally we got gold.”

Like Pearce, Brady Ellison has now won this tournament three times, in 2014, 2016 and 2024.

Mike Schloesser’s win in the compound men’s event is the second of his career after 2018. His wife, Gaby, finished runner-up to Di Francesco in the recurve women’s final, 57-47, for her first world podium.

Nectarios Condurache (Romania), Lucia Mosna (Italy), Dewey Hathaway (USA), Jaqueline Ringström (Sweden) and Ludvig Rohlin (Sweden) won the under-21 events. There was no world champion title awarded in the barbow women’s under-21 category.