A native of Cherbourg, archer Damien Letulle participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 before a serious accident ended his career. Quadriplegic, the Norman athlete took up the bow and arrows for a new challenge: participating in the Paralympic Games in Paris.
For 20 years he did not shoot a single arrow. On September 1st, he will aim for a medal. After seeing his sporting career shattered by a terrible accident at the age of 27, Damien Letulle, now in his fifties, is returning to competition at the highest level. Certainly, his body is different but his rage to win remains the same
Suffering from “incomplete” quadriplegia, the Norman 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 was quickly confronted with a different body. We had to adapt the training, optimize each arrow to shoot less.“, says the former president of Octeville HS archery.
Concentrated, his eye riveted on the target placed 50 meters from his chair, the athlete receives at the Creps des Pays de la Loire (Sports Resources, Expertise and Performance Center), near Nantes, where he has been training for several months. It’s been 28 years since he was “dreamed of a medal“.
Former pillar of the French team, third at the 1996 European Championships, he participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games the same year.
Damien Letulle in 1996 • © Archives
A year later, at Insep, a temple of French high level, Damien Letulle fell several meters. “I went out onto the terrace, sat on a roof window and it broke under my weight. I passed through, five meters below. Which broke my spine and gave me a big bruise on my head.“Three weeks of coma will follow.”I woke up in a new body, a spacesuit. There was no longer any question archery but to regain a taste for life. Anyway, at the time, there couldn’t be high-level sport for me in a body that doesn’t function 100%.“, he remembers.
At 25, he “learn to live again“thanks to new projects, a website dedicated to”hidden sports“, then a company which provides advice and materials to promote the sexuality of people with disabilities. “These are the projects that overcome disability. We can be stuck in our body and live with the rage of not being able to do this or that, but we don’t get 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, is my sports project“, he says.
His former teammate Sébastien Flute, gold medalist at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, says:impressed by the guy“Godfather of his two sons aged 13 and 17, the sports director of the archery events of the Paris Games praises the sense of humor”constant, sometimes destabilizing” of his friend and his “limitless strength of mind”.
Damien Letulle’s arrows to aim for the medal at the Olympics • © D.Frotté
At 10 years old, when he started in Cherbourg, his hometown, he was “not very very good“, he said, but his “competitive soul“hated doing”beat every Sunday“. So he persevered, until he joined the French team. He found his “fighting spirit” upon learning that the 2024 Games would be held in Paris, “at home“. Adapting his equipment for the competition was not easy. To avoid exhausting himself going back and forth, he observes his score on his smartphone using a camera placed in front of the target.
Damien Letulle benefits from equipment adapted to his disability • © France 3 Normandie Caen
As for his custom release, it was designed by one of his engineer and amateur archer friends, without whom “nothing would have been possible“. “There were easily 15 versions, over two, three years: it was necessary to eliminate everything bias, any parasitic friction“, explains Simon Julien. As the Games approach, Damien Letulle notes that “good sign” of destiny: the archery events will take place at Les Invalides, where more than 25 years ago, he began his convalescence.
2024-04-19 11:17:22
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