Archer Brady Ellison has a stack of medals and a list of championships but as he heads to his fourth-straight Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, he's aiming to win his first Olympic Gold.
The number-one ranked archer in the world lives part-time in Chula Vista, where he trains at the Elite Athlete Training Center. But, few know about the recent health struggles that almost ended his career and his search for a cure that western medicine could not provide.
Ellison almost walked away from the sport after the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
"Almost everyone told me to quit," Ellison said.
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San Diego to Tokyo
Almost everyone, that is, except for Ellison's wife, Toja -- also a professional archer. It was their similarities that gave her extra compassion as she watched her husband two years back deal with a painful finger injury.
"It didn't hurt unless I was shooting, which is kind of a big deal -- which sucks in this sport," Ellison said.
Brady went from shooting thousands of arrows a day to less than a hundred. His scores started dropping and the worst part of it all: no doctor or test could identify the problem or solution.
"When they told him he's just going to have to quit, we were like, 'No, lets find a way,'" Toja Ellison said.
Toja, who is Slovenian, arranged for Brady to see someone in her home country -- a bioenergetist.
"He's not a doctor," Toja Ellison said. "He's actually a policeman."
"He's one of those people who was given a gift, and with, he has a high energy level, not, like, energy like caffeine energy, but his body has a higher energy than anyone else in the world and he is able just to see things and heals you with his energy," Brady Eillison said.
He knows it may sound weird, but after just three visits, his finger fully healed and within months he returned to form -- setting a world record for accuracy.
A comeback story some may find hard to believe, but for Brady Ellison, the most accurate archer on the planet, this unlikely path back to the top has all the makings of a storybook finish, with Tokyo holding the one thing he hasn't conquered in the sport yet -- Olympic Gold.
"Every single day is thinking about that gold medal," Brady Ellison said. "It's all I can think about. Every arrow I shoot, everything I train for, it's all about winning that gold."
Listen/Subscribe to NBC 7’s Olympic Dreams: San Diego to Tokyo podcast wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. On each episode, NBC 7 News Today anchor Steven Luke will sit down with athletes in their prime, each with their sights set on one thing: representing Team USA in Tokyo this summer. How will they achieve their Olympic dreams?
