Marcus Vinicius Carvalho Lopes D'Almeida (born January 30, 1998, in Rio de Janeiro)[1][2][3] is a Brazilian athlete who competes in recurvearchery. In February 2023, he became the first Brazilian to lead the world archery ranking in his category, the recurve bow.[4][5]
Career
D'Almeida first competed internationally in 2013, and in 2014 won three gold medals at the South American Games (where he broke all South American records for 1440 Rounds) and qualified for the 2014 Archery World Cup Final as the second highest qualifier, where he won a silver medal, losing to Brady Ellison in the final by shoot-off.
[6][7][8] His spectacular rise to the upper echelons of the sport while still a teenager has earned him the nickname, "Archery's Neymar".[9]
At the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020, by beating Dutchman Sjef van den Berg and advancing to the round of 16, he obtained the best result of a Brazilian archer in the history of archery in the Olympics.[12] He was eliminated in the round of 16 by Italian Mauro Nespoli, who finished with Olympic silver in this competition. Nespoli hit all the arrows in the most central part of the target (always getting 9 or 10 points).[13][14]
In September 2021 he won the first medal in Brazil's history at the World Archery Championships. He won the silver medal, in a competition that featured all the medalists of the Tokyo Olympics.[15]
In June 2022, he reached the 4th place in the world ranking after the title at the World Cup in Paris, where he defeated three Olympic champions, two of them South Koreans.[16]
In February 2023, he became the first Brazilian to lead the world archery ranking in his category, the recurve bow.[17] On May, he won his second title at a stage of the Archery World Cup with a win on the second stage in Shanghai. On August, at the 2023 World Archery Championships in Berlin, D'Almeida went on to win his second World Championships medal, with a bronze, defeating 6–4 Indonesia's Arif Dwi Pangestu. Two weeks later, he won a bronze medal at the 4th stage of the 2023 Archery World Cup in Paris and, onde September 10, he won another gold medal on the Final World Cup stage in Hermosillo, Mexico, defeating at the final south korean Lee Woo-seok 6–4, the most important title of his career.
At the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, he had problems in the ranking phase and qualified only in 17th place. This caused an "early final" between Marcus, number 1 in the world, and South Korean Kim Woo-Jin, number 2 in the world, to take place in the round of 16. Kim Woo-Jin was practically perfect, hitting almost all of his arrows in the center of the target, beating Marcus 7–1 and subsequently becoming the gold medalist of the competition.[20][21][22]
