Archer Guillaume Toucoullet has started the Paralympic Games strong. On Thursday 29 August, during the ranking round, which determines the table of sixteen qualified for the final on Wednesday 4 September (3:27 p.m.), the leader of the French para archery team chained together ten points to beat the Paralympic record for the open recurve bow (shooting at 70 metres, standing, on a high seat or a wheelchair), at 652 points.
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When he competes, the 39-year-old from Bayonne is easy to recognize. Not because his full beard, receding hairline and tattooed arms make him look like a heavy metal drummer, a musical genre he loves, but because he shoots standing up with a classic bow, holding the string with his teeth. “In my categorywe are three archers shooting with our mouths, specifies the Basque. Everyone has developed their own technique.”
Guillaume Toucoullet shoots “by mouth” using a small leather tab attached to the string of his bow. This device allows him to pick up the string, pull it and release with precision. Controlled by the champion, the gesture is fluid, but imposes enormous tension on the neck, jaws and teeth.
Guillaume Toucoullet says little about his accident and the resulting disability. Hit by a car while riding a motorbike in 2010, he suffered a brachial plexus injury, which left him without the use of his left arm. Even today, this inert arm is sometimes painful. To compensate, he has to strengthen his neck and cervical muscles.
“The Demon of Competition”
“My problem is that I have no stability at the back, no reference point, he explains. I have to do everything with my neck, with the strength of my neck. I have to listen to my feelings, I constantly “scan” my body to know if my position is good. And I adjust according to what my coach tells me. The wind is my pet peeve, because it can throw everything off balance.”
Passionate about sports, having played Basque pelota a lot in his youth, Guillaume Toucoullet took up rowing again only twelve months after his accident. He put in the effort, to the point of participating in the qualification of the French team in the discipline for the Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016, but he was not selected. Disgusted, he slammed the door on the federation and set out in search of another sport that could be practiced with one arm.
In 2016, during an association forum in Anglet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), near his home, he discovered archery. “Coming from rowing, I was one of those people who considered it not a sport. I was a jerkhe says.. You might not see it on TV, but it’s very intense.”
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