Before Matt Stutzman, an athlete with no arms competing in para archery seemed like an impossible feat.
But the American archer has redefined the sport, showing that it’s possible to not only hold a bow with one leg, pull the bowstring back with one’s jaw, hold all the tension and potential energy and release an arrow, but to do so with an accuracy so unerring that it won him a gold medal with a Paralympic record score of 149 on Sunday.
Almost as soon as Stutzman’s final arrow hit the target – scoring a 10, of course – he jumped up from his chair, rushed towards his teammate and hugged him, celebrating the achievement for which he has dedicated 12 years of his life.
Elsewhere across the Paralympic archery venue too, there were living embodiments of his legacy in the form of other armless archers – two others in the men’s compound open and another, Sheetal Devi, in the women’s competition.
“It’s kind of like my gold medal, as long as one of us armless archers medals,” Stutzman said before the Paralympics began. “I don’t care (who). How cool would that be? I tell them all my secrets. It’s about growing the sport.”
Stutzman was born without arms and was adopted at four months old by a family of hunters in Iowa where he grew up wanted to be like his father and brother even though “they couldn’t hit nothing,” he said, according to the International Paralympic Committee.
“But when you’re little, you want to act like your dad or mimic what he does, so he helped me purchase my first bow,” Stutzman added. “I was 16 at the time.” But that bow was stolen the following year and he did not buy another one until almost a decade later. From that point on, however, his archery only improved and he became a Paralympic silver medalist in 2012.
In 2015, he set a new world record when he hit a target from a remarkable 283.47 meters (930.04 feet) away, breaking the previous mark that had been set by an able-bodied person.
And, alongside his record-breaking exploits, Stutzman has opened up a whole new aspect of the sport, showing that an athlete who has no arms can compete and excel in para archery.
Devi, who is one of his protégées, is just 17 years old but won bronze in the mixed team compound open competition, becoming the first female archer without arms to medal at the Paralympic Games.
She too was born with a rare condition that meant her arms didn’t fully develop, and she took up archery at a youth event organized by the Indian Army in 2021. Her athleticism impressed the coaches there and, at first, they tried using prosthetics to allow her to hold a bow. When that didn’t work, they came across Stutzman, the ‘Armless Archer’ who had medaled at the 2012 Paralympics.
Copying him, Devi rose through the sport, winning a world championship silver medal in 2023 and a gold medal at the Asian Para Games that same year.
“Archery is everything for me,” Devi said after winning her Paralympic bronze medal.
“From the time I started doing archery, my life has changed. If I wasn’t doing archery, I wouldn’t be here. Within such a short span of time, I have achieved so much.”
Videos of her incredible performances at the Paris Paralympics have gone viral, making her one of the defining images of these Games.
Stutzman has already said that these Paralympic Games will be his last. Shooting with his leg for so long has taken a toll, creating “hip issues,” he said, and “after 13-and-a-half years or so of shooting every day, my hips are what the doctors say are ‘wearing out.’”
But he leaves behind a changed sport, one that epitomizes much of the Paralympics’ spirit and has opened up new opportunities for the next generation of archers.
