GG Saade

Maya Saade shoots compound bow for a Beirut club, twice a national finalist, and works as a physiotherapist whose patients know nothing of the medals; she finds the two jobs identical, alignment, breath, release. She keeps a handwritten page on every opponent she has faced twice, a line or two on tendencies and tells, updated after each match and shown to nobody. She trains on a rooftop range her brothers built her and competes wherever the federation can send her. Backgammon came from the club's waiting hours. She plays exact and self-contained, punishing the smallest slip and letting the pages do work an opponent never sees being done. An arrow, she says, leaves no time for second thoughts, and neither do her doubles.