The 30-year-old former European champion confirmed a quota place, along with Moldova’s Dan Olaru, as both reached semi-finals where their opponents were from the Spanish team, which had already confirmed its available quota place.

"The main goal was getting the quota place," said Unruh, after defeating Spain’s current European champion Miguel Alvarino Garcia 6-2 on a tricky, windy final day of archery at the Games.

"So when the two Spanish guys were in the semi-final I was like ‘OK, just win my quarter-final and get through.'

"This was the biggest goal and then just to shoot good and hopefully win.”

On the previous day Olympic quota places had been won by Britain's 18-year-old Penny Healey, winner of the women's recurve title and Italy's women's bronze medallist Chiara Rebagliati.

Spain had already earned a quota place thanks to victory in the mixed team event on Sunday (June 25).

After his final Unruh - who took the second name of his team-mate Lisa Unruh when they married in 2020, having been born with the surname of Kahllund - said: "It went pretty OK.

"I think I read the wind - every wind has been a different wind and it has been a bit tough to get through every match.

"I expected I would be able to win but I didn’t expect to win because you cannot expect anything in men’s recurve - it’s such a dense field.

"It's one of my biggest wins, my first win in a multisport event."

At 3-1 down, Alvarino Garcia made a big effort to draw level with successive 10s, but a final effort of 7 opened the way for his more consistent opponent to extend the lead to 5-1 after three scores of 9, 10 and 9.

In the final set the Spaniard, trailing 17-18 with just the final arrows to come, shot 10 to Unruh’s 9 - but that left them level and gave the German the shared point he needed to confirm gold.

So Alvarino Garcia, who had earlier beaten Turkey’s Olympic champion Mete Gazoz, missed a crowning glory.

Unruh’s first victory of the day, by 6-2, had come at the expense of Italy’s defending champion Mauro Nespoli, and his quota-winning match was a 6-5 quarter-final win over Steve Wijler of The Netherlands before he beat Spain’s Pablo Acha 7-1 in the semi-final.

Acha then defeated Olaru 7-1 in the bronze-medal match.

In the men's compound singles Italy's Marco Bruno, who earlier in competition put out the defending champion and world number one Mike Schloesser of The Netherlands, had to settle for silver in the final, beaten 146-144 by Slovakia's Josef Bosansky.

Turkey's Emerican Haney won the bronze-medal match against home archer Lukasz Przybylski 149-146.