‘I saw no way out for me or my family, there was no light... but archery gave me a reason to live’
FOR YEARS, John Stubbs saw no escape from the darkness that had come to envelop his life. Aged 24, while riding his motorbike home from work, he was hit by a car. As he lay prone in the gloom, a second vehicle ran over him. His femoral artery was severed and it took a 68-pint blood transfusion to save his life. Stubbs’ right leg was later amputated. He had been a happy man, travelling that night from a job he loved to his wife and newborn baby. But suddenly he was plunged into an all-consuming cocktail of depression and addiction. ‘I saw no way out for me or my family,’ he admits. ‘There was no light, I tried to end my life.’ Stubbs is now 56 years old and was, along with Ellie Simmonds, the British flagbearer at the Tokyo Paralympics. The moment he describes as his ‘absolute salvation’ came 28 years ago, when he was introduced to archery at a rehabilitation centre. ‘It gave me a reason to live,’ he recalls. ‘I took up a sport where I could compete with able-bodied counterparts on a level playing-field. That’s all I’m after, that parity. Without that, if I hadn’t gone back to that rehabilitation unit… I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be here now.’ Tokyo was Stubbs’ fourth Games and although he is the self-confessed ‘rebel’ of the GB squad, he is also its elder statesman. His story is perhaps extreme, but the transformative effect of picking up a bow and arrow is one his fellow Paralympians, of all ages, attest to. Phoebe Paterson-Pine shocked the field to claim gold in her first Paralympics in August, in a tournament she would not even have been competing in if it wasn’t for the year’s delay caused by the pandemic. The 23-year-old, who has spina bifida, thrillingly edged out Chile’s Mariana Zuniga in the women’s individual compound open final. Archery has taken her from the girl who was always picked last in P.E. to the champion of the world. ‘The sport really has helped me out of some very dark spots in life,’ says Paterson-Pine. ‘School was particularly tough for me. I was one of only two disabled people there. And kids are rude, kids will just say what’s going on in their minds. I don’t think there’s a name under the sun that I haven’t been called before. ‘If I was having a bad day because somebody had said something, archery would save me. If I felt sad, I’d go and shoot. ‘It just picks me up and I really found archery at the right point in my life. It got me out of some thick situations and I couldn’t suggest more to people that if they are feeling down to try it.’ Indeed, archery — more than most sports — places emphasis on the mental fortitude of its athletes. At a tournament like the Paralympics, every competitor has the technical skill to unerringly hit the centre of the 80-centimetre target. The question is whether they can clear their head of all distractions and focus despite the immense pressure. Sports psychology is an essential ingredient in the training diet of any elite archer. And when it comes to mental strength, Victoria Rumary is something of an expert. Rumary took up archery as a 12-year-old but, after surgery for epilepsy left her unable to walk, she stopped shooting at her beloved local club in Lincoln. Away from the sport for four years, she visited her former coach to sell her old bows. Instead, she left his shop convinced to take archery back up, after being bluntly challenged: ‘Remind me, which part of the bow did you pull with your legs?’. It was a sliding doors moment, ‘like a light being switched on,’ as Rumary, now 33, puts it. After a stunning Games debut in Tokyo, the sport has given her a Paralympic bronze medal. But just like Stubbs and PatersonPine, it has also changed her life immeasurably for the better. ‘Archery has made a massive difference,’ says Rumary. ‘When I ended up in my chair, I suffered a lot with depression and anxieties. ‘When my coach showed me I could go back to my club, my confidence just grew. Suddenly I thought: “Yeah, I’m going to go out to the shops again” or “I’m going to meet up with my friends again”.’