Sheetal Devi becomes first Indian archer to win BBC Emerging Athlete of the Year award
Sheetal Devi‘s phenomenal journey has been laced by several firsts, and she continues to build on it, becoming the first archer to win Emerging Athlete of the Year for 2024 at the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year awards on 18 February.
The 18-year-old para archery prodigy was feted with the honour after becoming India’s youngest Paralympic medallist in Paris 2024. She claimed compound mixed team bronze partnering with Rakesh Kumar at Les Invalides.
“Overwhelmed with gratitude to receive the prestigious BBC Emerging Player of the Year award,” Devi posted on her X account. “Thank you for your love and support,”
Over the past two years, Devi has received several awards, including the prestigious Arjuna, India’s second-highest sporting honour, recognising her effort at the Asian Para Games in Hangzhou, where she won compound women’s gold.
“Archery is everything to me. Archery is my identity,” Devi said to BBC.
“No one knew me, and I didn’t know anybody. But after I became an archer, I came to know everyone and now they know me as well,” added the armless archer, who was born with phocomelia, a rare medical condition that causes limbs to compress or not develop at all.
It’s the fifth edition of the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year and the fourth Emerging Player of the Year awards, celebrating Indian female athletes and recognising their success in various sports over the past year.
No archer had ever been honoured with this distinction before.
Devi joined Olympic and Paralympic gold-medal winning shooters Manu Bhaker and Avani Lekhara, who were named the Indian Sportswoman of the Year and the Para-sportswoman of the Year for 2024 at the awards announced following a global public vote. Former Indian women’s cricket team captain Mithali Raj was presented the Lifetime Achievement honour.
Devi’s meteoric rise over the last three years has caused a sensation, with people all over the world astonished by her extraordinary technique. She is currently the only active armless female archer to compete internationally.
However, the prodigy recounts that the people in her native Lohidar, a small village in the district of Kishtwar, in Jammu and Kashmir, would ridicule her parents.
“They used to say ‘what sort of daughter you have given birth to, look at her’,” Sheetal remembered. “This would make mother cry a lot.”
But fate had other plans, and a visit to Bengaluru, India’s biggest tech hub, in 2021 would change her life completely.
“There I met others like me which I hadn’t known till then. I always thought I was alone. The people I met told me that they play sport and shared their journey. That’s when I thought and believed that I can do something too.”
And the rest was history.
Devi also has two gold and one silver medals in Hangzhou 2022, as well as silver at the World Archery Para Championships in 2023, adding to her Paralympic bronze from last year.
“I always thought that I’d only be a champion when I win a gold medal. When I won, my eyes were filled with tears.”
“When the Indian flag was unfurled, it was my most favourite moment,” she said with pride.
Now, Sheetal hopes to be able to go home soon, something she hasn’t done for the last three years – she promised herself she wouldn’t visit home until after she’d won a medal.
Today, she has 13 medals from various championships and inspires young girls in India and beyond to pursue their dreams fearlessly.
Video courtesy of BBC Sport.
