Paralympic Archer's Inspiring Comeback

In his “new body”, Damien Letulle kept a “competitor’s soul” and the “rage to win” that he had in his blood. After the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the now quadriplegic archer will participate in the Paralympic Games in Paris.

The road to the competition was winding for this French athlete. Wheelchair-bound since a heavy fall 27 years ago, he thought he had “given up” on archery.

And yet, here he is back in training, left hand attached to his bow by a splint, right hand leaning on a custom-designed release.

Suffering from “incomplete” quadriplegia, the 51-year-old athlete can move his arms but not his fingers. He shoots his arrows by activating the release with a slight rotation of the elbow.

“When my Paris 2024 project was born, I got back into it completely. But I quickly found myself confronted with a different body. We had to adapt the training, optimize each arrow to shoot less,” says Damien Letulle.

Former pillar of the French team, third at the 1996 European Championships, he participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games the same year.

A year later, at Insep, a temple of French high level, Damien Letulle fell several meters. Suffering from a brain hematoma and fractured cervical vertebrae, he spent three weeks in a coma.

"I woke up in a new body, a diving suit. It was no longer a question of archery but of regaining a taste for life. In any case, at the time, there could be no high-level sport in a body that does not function at 100%,” he remembers.

"These are the projects that overcome disability. You can be stuck in your body and live with the rage of not being able to do this or that, but you don't move very far. I don't wake up wishing I could walk again or move my fingers again. What I think about in the morning when I wake up, in the evening when I go to bed, at night in my dreams, it's my sports project," he says.

He rediscovered his “rage to win” when he learned that the 2024 Games would be held in Paris, “at home”.