Four back, she aimed at the other side of the target.

Sheetal Devi’s second end in the individual final was an 8 and two 9s, 26 points. Singapore’s Nur Syahidah Alim, who had lost this same final to her at the last Asian Para Games, shot a 30 with an X in it. On Oct. 22 in Okazaki, Devi was four points down, 55-59.

Gaurav Sharma, her coach, talked to her there. The wind was coming from 3 o’clock, the right side of the target, and it had been that way all morning. He told her not to hold the shot, to stay with her technique, and to aim off toward 9 o’clock, the other side. Then the wind began to cross the range, and the aim had to move again. She shot six 10s after that. Three of them, a whole end, were Xs, the ring inside the 10. Another 30 put her in front, 115-113, with three arrows left.

Sharma had also told her not to chase the 10s. She finished with three 9s, Alim shot 26, and the match was 142-139. “I was just thinking to shoot my best; follow the process,” Devi said.

The hold he meant is a foot and a jaw. Devi is 19, from Jammu and Kashmir, and she was born without arms. She picks the arrow up with her foot, sets the compound bow between her toes, and hooks the string into a release on a strap across her chest, just over the right shoulder. A small move of the jaw, or the shoulder, lets the arrow go. When Kuldeep Vedwan first coached her, she asked how an arrow was supposed to leave if her feet were the ones on the bow. He had seen Matt Stutzman, the American who shoots without arms, use a release in that place, and he built her one.

Until World Archery changed the rule, the heel rested against the bow. Now only the toes and the front of the foot may touch it. Sharma said learning that grip, and lining the bow up again, was like starting the basics over. She has trained with him in Patiala since November 2024. “There was so much pain in my leg,” she said. “The soreness in my toes is still fresh.”

If the pressure in those toes changes while the leg is extended, the arrow moves. In training she presses clay with her toes and keeps the pressure steady while the leg shifts. Sharma also has her shoot one arrow at a time at the inner 10, so the arrow she may need three times in a match is one she has already shot by itself. In qualifying she shot 704 out of 720, the same total Turkey’s Oznur Cure Girdi set for the world record at the Paris Paralympics. She came into the week ranked No. 1. Sharma counted 32 inner 10s on her round, and 29 on Cure Girdi’s. In the round of 16 she shot 149 against Hong Kong’s Chan Yuen Wah, a match record. In the final she had to put those 10s together again, and move the aim while the wind changed.

Less than two hours earlier, she and Toman Kumar had beaten Indonesia 151-148 for the mixed-team gold, in that same wind off the right. She was defending the mixed title she had won last time with Rakesh Kumar, her partner for the bronze in Paris. In qualifying the new pair shot 1,402, a world record. On Wednesday, she and Payal Nag lost the women’s doubles final to China. That was the title Devi had wanted. She said people had expected medals from her, and that the pressure was real. It was her second Asian Para Games, and the week came to two golds and a silver. The one she had come for was the individual.