Matt Stutzman’s story has been told many times, but his achievement in Paris perhaps deserves some more attention.
It’s a truism that most Olympians in general tend to perform best at their first Olympics. While that same truism doesn’t quite hold for Paralympians, remember Stutzman picked up a silver from the London 2012 Paralympic Games, but came up short in both Rio and Tokyo, failing to medal individually. It took dogged persistence, and multiple setbacks, to maintain his career long enough for a last shot in Paris.
Once in the arena, Stutzman survived two shoot-offs to reach the individual final at Paris 2024 and beat top seed Ai Xinliang to claim gold with a score of 149, a new Paralympic record, in front of a packed house including his family and – of all people – Hollywood star Jackie Chan.
But Stutzman’s career as the ‘Armless Archer’ has ultimately not been measured in major medals. The irresistible, impossible story of a man without arms shooting a bow has been told over and over in news media literally all over the world; helped by Matt’s own brilliance at telling it and marketing himself. He has almost certainly created more headlines than any other tournament archer in history, and has helped sell the sport to places it might never have gone
But at least three more ‘armless archers’, all para-athletes born without arms, have followed his path: India’s Sheetal Devi, Belgium’s Piotr Van Montagu and Mexico’s Victor Sardina Viveros. All of them were in Paris along with Matt, the man who blazed the trail. “There’re more armless archers involved in this sport now.” he said. “You can take away all my medals, and I wouldn’t care, because that would be my medal.”
His real legacy may not be as an archer, but as an inspiration. As he said in the documentary Rising Phoenix, about his gradual realisation that he could do everything people with arms could do – including climbing trees – he reasoned: “I could drive a car with my feet, and outrace 90% of the people around me. A car doesn’t stereotype the driver. It doesn’t care if you have arms or not. It just wants to be driven.”
While Woojin has finally been crowned as the greatest Korean archer of all – and it’s well deserved – Stutzman has ultimately changed both the sport and the perception of what it means to be born without limbs, to refuse to accept limitations.
For that, he should really be crowned Archer Of The Century.
