Paris Paralympics 2024: Sheetal Devi Is The Most Amazing Sight In World Sport
When you first hear about Sheetal Devi, about how she plays her sport, you will find it difficult – if not impossible – to believe. An armless archer? Those two words don’t go together. Then you see her in action, and the disbelief gets upgraded to incredulity — from ‘what are you saying?’ to ‘what am I even seeing?’. How do you explain what it feels like when you see something that you never had even imagined to be possible? That’s exactly what it feels like when watching her.
Once you do see her, though, it’s impossible to look away; Sheetal Devi in full flow is just the most amazing sight in world sport. As the world – videos of her have gone viral globally – found out in these Paralympic Games, that captivation is instant and inevitable. It starts with trying to comprehend the complex technique that makes this possible: the feet holding the bow up at eye level, the heavy equipment caught between her big toe and second; the mouth pulling back a band attached to the arrow, notching it to a special equipment attached to her shoulder; her using a combination of stretching out her leg holding the bow and the muscles in her chest and shoulder to draw the arrow back and release it with just as much force as any professional would with their hands. All in a couple of seconds, one smooth, balletic movement.
The aesthetics of it is key. Sport holds a natural fascination for us because it’s other humans doing things brilliantly while looking fantastic doing it. Think of the great sights in world sport: Of a Neeraj Chopra in full flight, hurling himself and that javelin into the ether. A Mondo Duplantis flowing through the air and over the pole vault bar like he was floating on a personal cloud. A Simone Biles somersaulting into the air like she’s entirely elastic. A Leo Messi dribble where he makes it look like the ball and he speak a language only they understand. A Syndney McLaughlin run where she eats up the track and the hurdles on it like it’s a morning jog, except she’s going faster around a lap than any woman ever. The aesthetics of these great athletes are impeccable, and the visceral thrill of seeing them in action speaks directly to our adrenal glands… but what sets Sheetal apart is how she combines all that with the base physical impossibility of doing what she does with her from-birth condition.
It takes remarkable body strength to pull it off — but remarkable is what Sheetal brings to the table. After all, the power needed to do this was built up by her climbing trees when she was a child, using only her upper body and legs. Why did she do something so impossibly tough, you ask? Because she wanted to, and a lack of arms was not going to stop her. This is what makes her extraordinary — unlike every other child, she would have had no model to learn this (or anything else) from but what she did was apply herself to the task, experiment and find a way to do it.
Under the wow factor of her technique, it’s this steel will of hers that shines through the longer you watch her. Add to this her age: She’s 17, at the very start of her career. Being able to do something like this is one (huge) thing, being able to do it well at an elite level a whole different ball game… and there was no way Sheetal was ever going to do something in any way other than the latter. The more you see her in action, the more used to the technique you get (as used as anyone can get to watching the incredible), her sporting brilliance takes over your attention.
You see, unlike in Olympic archery where a few loose arrows or sets can be made up, para-archery demands constant perfection. Each arrow is counted towards the final cumulative score. Remember that clip of her hitting a dead-centre that went viral a few days ago? She does that again, and again, and again every time she competes… she has to shoot 8 arrows in every mixed compound match she plays, 15 in every individual match. The fact that at age 17 she has two Asian Para golds (one of those won by hitting six straight tens at the end), a World Championships silver, and a Paralympics silver in this most demanding sport is telling — she’s not just a rare genius, she’s a consistent rare genius. The difficulty of being that cannot be overstated.
While Sheetal is the only female ‘armless‘ archer competing at an elite international level, there are three men who took part in this year’s Paralympics under the same restrictions. Piotr Van Montagu of Belgium, Victor Sardina Viveros of Mexico, and the OG ‘armless’ archer Matt Stutzman of the USA. Stutzman, a four-time Paralympian, won his first gold in Paris a couple of days ago in a most stunning manner — setting a Paralympic record with a frankly ludicrous score of 149/150.
Stutzman was, in fact, an inspiration for Sheetal’s coaches. They had been struggling to find ways to get the best out of her after they’d found that prosthetics wouldn’t fit, but stumbling onto Stutzman in their research cleared the path. 11 months after that training started, she was winning those Asian Games golds. A year on from that and here we are, a Paralympic games bronze hanging around her neck.
“Whenever I see the medals, I have won [until now], I feel inspired to win more. I have only just started,” she had told the BBC earlier. This is not just a vision statement; it’s backed up by her belief in-game. “Even when I shoot a nine, I’m only thinking about how I can convert that into a 10 on the next shot.”
She’s now well on the way to conquer a sport she had felt was “impossible,” because “My legs used to ache a lot” and it’s because of that I-can-do-anything attitude of hers. “I believe that no one has any limitations, it’s just about wanting something enough and working as hard as you can. If I can do it, anyone else can.” This is backed by her mentor. Stutzman has said about her that “her drive to win is incredible. She listens, she’s motivated and she has the same spark [he had initially]”. He recently called her “the future of the sport”.
You can see why, clearly. While Stutzman is the pioneering legend, it’s Sheetal that has become a sensation, the one has brought the world’s focus onto the sport of para-archery. Every once in a while, you get an athlete who takes up a position in popular culture that’s often bigger than their sport itself, and that’s where Sheetal finds herself right now. On the face of it, Sheetal seems strong enough to handle all that attention. After all, she shrugged off the disappointment of a pre-quarters‘ loss (the match from which the clip went viral, a match where she showed all the nerves a 17-year-old debutant at the world’s biggest stage is expected to) to bring her A-game to the mixed event just two days later. That’s mental toughness of the highest order. She’ll continue to need it as her career takes off from here. Her fame continues to skyrocket, and this medal will only add to it.
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