More than four years, Walker was on patrol in Haditha, Iraq, when their vehicle hit an explosive device. The explosion destroyed his legs. But his injuries he wouldn't participate in the second games of annual Warrior, an event of Olympic style for service members wounded, injured and sick veterans, that took place last week in United States Olympic training center. Last Wednesday, mind Walker was nothing but the basketball court.
Walker, a 30-year white pine, Tennessee, said that "when I was in Bethesda, Marines come visit me at different levels of their rehabilitation". "You see other people and think that I will be there some day."
Managed by the Olympic Committee of United States and the Department of Defense, the Warrior games originated from the idea that sports play a critical role in helping disabled service member recovery physically and psychologically.
A civilian, in view of these young majority men and women arranged their bodies in a pool or basketball court can be jarring, if not emotional. But this was a fiercely competitive and collegiate, sporting event.
As Charlie Huebner, the head of the Paralympic Games from the U.S.O.C., said: "many of the children we serve, the first thing to worry about is being able to play with their children: if it is running or playing basketball or simply doing what would be a MOM or dad." "The movement is about the power of sport."
This year, the Warrior games caused 220 participants from 187 in its inaugural year, with teams of infantry of Navy, army, Navy and Coast Guard, air force and special operations in person and team events.
The classifications of the event were specifically designed for warrior games, Huebner said. In swimming, for example, athletes are grouped by disability. Amputated leg only compete against each other, as do the athletes are missing both legs.
Those with spinal cord injuries are a separate category, and soldiers with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder have their own group.
Team sports are organized differently. Sitting volleyball, with the network a few meters above the ground, it is open to all, while they remain seated. Wheelchair basketball is also open, but teams are required to have at least two players with the lower floor extremity injuries at all times.
Blake McMinn, a former soldier who lost his right leg when his tank was destroyed apart by a bomb in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2007, playing for the mighty army of wheelchair basketball team. Army easily defeated the Marines for the gold medal on Friday night.
McMinn, 23, of Arlington, Tex, recalled that you approached in the Las Vegas Strip by a man who invited him to shoot around with a local team of wheelchair.
"It took me a month I talk about it," McMinn said after a victory over air force, a rough game which went flying wheelchairs and players hit the floor. "Once I did, I fell with him."
Not everyone in the Warrior games have war wounds.
In the Aquatics Center, marine veteran Chuck Sketch, 43, of Wildomar, California, had swung his torso to the pool for the start of the race in 50 meters freestyle for amputees doubles. In the middle of enlistment of sketch in the early 1990s, he developed a malignant brain tumor that led to blood clots in the legs and cuts off the blood supply to the optic nerve. His legs were amputated and he lost the sight.
In the years after its adoption, Sketch took swimming making dog paddle with a life vest. After three months, I was swimming alone.
"Only beat last year for a second time what they understand,", he said, smiling. "It's a recharge humongous to every part of your body."
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