The armless archer: meet the Paralympian to root for in 2021

Brut America

He was born without arms, but that couldn't stop Matt Stutzman from becoming one of the best archers in the world ... and he has the medals to prove it.

Transcript

00:00I've had this happen before where the kid will be like,

00:02look, mom, that guy has no arms.

00:05And the mom immediately is like, shh, don't talk, don't look.

00:08Like, I don't have a disease, you know?

00:10Like, it's not like if you look at me,

00:12your arms are going to fall off, too.

00:14I saw a guy on TV shooting his bow,

00:16and I was like, I can do that, I think.

00:20So I got a bow, and I started, I went online,

00:26and then I tried to Google how to teach an arm wristband,

00:29how to shoot a bow, and of course, that never showed nothing.

00:32And I eventually was able to self-teach myself how to shoot.

00:37I very quickly fell in love with the sport,

00:40and it didn't take me long to realize

00:42that this is what I was meant to do.

00:59Whether you're in a wheelchair or you're missing an arm,

01:08you're automatically, you can't do nothing.

01:10You immediately get put in this category that he or she

01:15will need assistance their entire life,

01:17and they literally can't do anything for themselves.

01:20In everybody's brain, there's a little section of your brain

01:23that controls your feet movements and things like that, right?

01:26And on you, I can't say for sure,

01:29but I would be pretty safe to guess that on you,

01:32because on the average person, the part of your brain

01:34that controls all your feet stuff is like the size of a pea, right?

01:39But for some reason, on my brain, it's like the size of a softball.

01:44So my brain uses up, I'm guessing it took all the storage

01:50that it was supposed to use for my arms,

01:53and I'm guessing it gave it to my feet

01:55to double the size of what my feet are capable of

01:57and how my feet work.

01:59The amazing thing about the Paralympics

02:25is that we all had to go through something to get there.

02:28And it wasn't just sport.

02:30Like, we all had to overcome certain things

02:33that went on in our personal lives

02:34before we even made it to the sports.

02:36When I was younger, I wanted to be Michael Jordan, right?

02:40Well, now there's kids that when they grow up,

02:43they want to be, you know, a Tatiana McFadden,

02:45or they want to be a Mads Tutsman,

02:48but they don't have a physical disability.

02:51But in their mind, they want to be like us.

02:58For a brief moment in time,

03:28everybody is just completely, they just coexist.

03:32There's no disabilities, there's no nothing, right?

03:35Everybody is just sport.

03:37And that's why I feel like it's one of the many reasons why,

03:40but I feel like it's important

03:41for the Paralympic movement to continue and to get stronger.

03:46And we need to get stronger.

03:47We need to keep pushing it and building as a world

03:50to making the Paralympic movement bigger and stronger.

03:53As far as the perspective of people outside

03:56looking in at the Paralympics,

03:58I feel like I saw a noticeable difference after London,

04:04the way people looked at people with physical disabilities.

04:08When I was approached about being a part of this,

04:11Raising Phoenix, that's why I wanted to be,

04:13I wanted to do it so bad,

04:15because this is my opportunity now to,

04:19with other athletes, literally change the perspective

04:24of what people with a physical disability is

04:27and what it actually means.

04:29I also think it's gonna change the perspective of people

04:33just about themselves, even.

04:34Like, look at these people,

04:35look what they had to go through,

04:36look what they've overcame,

04:38and look what they're doing now.

04:39♪♪

04:51There was a couple of amazing things that has happened

04:54because of the cancellation or changing it till next year

04:58is that I get a whole nother year to train,

05:01which makes me even better.

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