The British Invictus Games team are among the many heroes we’re saluting in the run up to Armed Forces Day – and they posed with an Armed Forces Day flag just before they boarded their flight to join the Games!
Team Invictus
The 110-strong team of serving military personnel and veterans headed to Orlando, Florida to represent the UK at the Invictus Games 2016 which begin this Sunday.
More than 180 Wounded, Injured and Sick personnel and veterans tried out for one of the 110 places available on the UK team. The benefit the Invictus Games will give them as part of their recovery was part of the criteria they were chosen on. Getting involved in sport helps with self-confidence and feeling psychologically empowered.
The team will compete in 10 sports: athletics, archery wheelchair basketball, road cycling, powerlifting, indoor rowing, wheelchair rugby, swimming, sitting volleyball, and a new sport for 2016 – wheelchair tennis.
The 2016 UK team captain is former Army Captain David Wiseman. He was shot by the enemy when commanding a small British Infantry team embedded within the Afghan National Army in Nad-e Ali district, in Helmand province in 2009.
A bullet entered his shoulder and travelled the length of his torso and hit his ribs. The bullet came to rest in his right lung, where it resides to this day. Capt Wiseman was diagnosed with PTSD in 2012, a condition which is now manageable but still a part of his day-to-day life.
He said:
I have a huge emotional attachment to the Invictus Games and could not be prouder to have been selected to Captain the UK Team at Orlando 2016. The reason for my pride?
I think the Invictus Games is a shining example of what this community can achieve, a group of individuals from around the world coming together in order to show everyone that beyond injury, they can achieve the extraordinary.