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.
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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.