Meet Matt Stutzman: the armless archer

He was born without arms, but that didn't stop Paralympian Matt Stutzman from becoming one of the best archers in the world ...

Transcript

00:00I went online and then I tried to, you know, Google how to teach an armistice man how to shoot a bow,

00:04and of course that never showed nothing. But I eventually was able to self-teach myself how to shoot.

00:30I've had this happen before where the kid will be like, look mom, that guy has no arms. And the mom

00:37immediately is like, shh, don't talk, don't look. Like, I don't have a disease. You know, like,

00:42it's not like if you look at me, your arms are going to fall off too. In everybody's brain,

00:46there's a little section of your brain that controls your feet movements and things like

00:50that, right? And on you, I can't say for sure, but I would be pretty safe to guess that on you,

00:57because on the average person, the part of your brain that controls all your feet stuff

01:02is like the size of a pea, right? But for some reason on my brain, it's like the size of like a

01:08softball. So my brain uses up, I'm guessing, I'm guessing it took all the storage that was supposed

01:16to be used for my arms, and I'm guessing it gave it to my feet to double the size of what my feet

01:22are capable of and how my feet work.

01:24So

01:48the amazing thing about the Paralympics is that we all had to go through something to get there.

01:54And it wasn't just sport, like we all had to overcome certain things that went on in our

01:59personal lives before we even made it to the sport. When I was younger, I wanted to be Michael

02:04Jordan. Right? Well, now there's kids that when they grow up, they want to be, you know, a Tatiana

02:10McFadden, or they want to be a Mads Tutsman or, and but they don't have a physical disability.

02:16But in their mind, they want to be like us.

02:46For a brief moment in time, everybody is just completely, they just coexist, there's no

02:59disabilities, there's no nothing, right? Everybody is just sport. And that's why I feel like it's

03:05one of the many reasons why but I feel like it's important for, for the Paralympic movement to

03:09continue and to get stronger. And we need to get stronger, we need to keep pushing it and

03:14building as a world to making the Paralympic movement bigger and stronger. As far as the

03:19perspective of people outside, looking in at the Paralympics, I feel like I saw a noticeable

03:27difference after London, the way people looked at people with physical disabilities. I also think

03:35it's going to change the perspective of people just about themselves, even like, look at these

03:40people, look what they had to go through, look what they've overcame, and look what they're doing now.