Sheetal Devi, 18, Achieves World Champion Dream with Flawless Archery Display

X, 10, 10.

Now that's how you win a world championship. Enter the last end (set of three arrows), nail three tens, end it with perfection.

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For any archer, this would be the best way to reach the apex of your sport; for an 18-year-old to do this against the world no.1, the defending champion and overwhelming favourite is something else. However, there is something that these numbers and facts -- great as they are -- can't quite capture: The visual element. This Sheetal Devi, perhaps the most amazing sight in the sporting world, and now the champion of her sporting world.

If you didn't know, Sheetal -- the global story of the 2024 Paralympics -- does not have arms. You might think that poses a fundamental problem when it comes to becoming an archer, and you'd be right. Those, though, are the odds she has overcome. Born with phocomelia, a congenital deformity that affects the development of limbs, Sheetal grew up doing things just because she wanted to -- climbing trees, for one -- and she carried that stubbornness and sheer force of will into her chosen career. At no stage was she simply content to do the impossible.

So, she learned to use her legs to hold the bow (right between her big toe and the second) and keep it steady at eye level. She learned to use her mouth to notch arrows to a special device attached to her shoulder. She learned to use a combination of stretching her leg and the incredibly strong muscles on her chest and shoulder to draw the arrow back and let it fly. She learned to do it all with the grace of a ballet dancer, and with the consistency and precision of a true winner.

At 16, she was an Asian Games gold medallist and a World Championship silver medallist, the first armless woman to win either medal. Last year, she won a Paralympic bronze (mixed team). And now this.

Last year, before the Paralympics, she'd told the BBC: "Whenever I see the medals I've won [until now], I feel inspired to win more. I have only just started... Even when I shoot a nine, I'm only thinking about how I can convert that into a 10 on the next shot."

That may sound like regular athlete pep-talk, but 'win more' is something she truly believes in, something she truly craves. On Saturday, after beating Turkey's Oznur Cure Girdi 146-143 (three being a big margin, especially for a final), she told World Archery, "I had a dream I would become world champion. It made me want to work. I worked and worked and today I've got such a good result."

SHEETAL DEVI IS WORLD PARA CHAMPION! ������
18-year-old beats the reigning champion Oznur Cure in Gwangju.#WorldArchery #ParaArchery pic.twitter.com/d5jDmdYkhq

- World Archery (@worldarchery) September 27, 2025

There is this hunger, this drive to her that sets her apart. It's not the kind that makes good athletes great; it's the kind that makes great athletes GOATs.

She'd come into the final on the back of a bronze medal in the mixed team, and a silver in the women's team event. The itch to complete that set would have been great, but she was up against a class field and no fluke or accident would get her that gold.

In the quarters, she'd taken a point lead in the second end, seen it increase to two and then went back to one across the next two sets, and needed a perfect score to win it in the fifth. She shot 10, X, X -- perfection. In the semis, she started by going a point down against world no. 2 Jodie Grinham before calmly drawing level, taking a point lead in the third, making it three in the fourth, and five in the fifth. Under pressure, Grinham cracked, Sheetal shone. In the final a rare slip from the great Oznur had given Sheetal an opening in the second end, that the teenage phenom slammed her way through -- Oznur shot 27/30, Sheetal hit 30. It was a three-point lead that became two in the fourth and there might have been pressure in the last end, but that's when she hit that combination of X, 10, 10. Three-point lead restored, crown not-so-gently taken off the head of Oznur.

"The pressure wasn't great," she said after her third medal match of the day. "I controlled myself and shot very calmly. My heartbeat wasn't so fast, so there was less pressure. It felt amazing just to be in the finals again."

What makes it all so brilliant from an Indian, or indeed neutral, perspective is that for Sheetal, India's first-ever para-world champion archer, the world's first armless woman to be crowned champion, this is just the beginning.