INVINCIBLE
Before the games even begin, the warrior athletes of Invictus have already won more battles than most of us will face in a lifetime
Mike Trauner has been training hard on the rowing machine in his basement and, after looking at the results from the last Invictus Games, he thinks he’s got a good shot at winning his event in Toronto.
He’d like to win — everyone likes to be a winner — but at the same time he knows it doesn’t really matter.
Trauner and the 550 military personnel and veterans from 17 countries competing in Toronto over the next eight days have something much weightier in mind when they take to the pool, track, sport courts and fields.
“We’re really battling against our own demons,” says the 38-year-old from Pembroke, Ont., who retired from the Canadian forces this year.
“People aren’t there at the games to earn medals; people are there to overcome their own problems in life.”
In his case, that’s a pretty long list: 18 surgeries and dying — twice.
On Dec. 5, 2008, Trauner was with the Canadian forces in Afghanistan on a dawn patrol when he stepped over a berm, heard a pop and found himself flying through the air.
“I didn’t know what the hell was happening and I landed in this crater the size of my pickup truck.”
He heard the calls go out over the radio for a helicopter to medivac a double amputee. He didn’t realize they meant him.
He lost both his legs that day — the left above the knee, the right just below — and doctors very nearly amputated his left hand as well. They lost his vital signs twice before stabilizing him. He has severe damage in both arms, there’s still a chunk of his assault rifle buried deep within his right hand, he has hearing damage, nerve damage and a body full of scars and burns.
“I can’t remember it all,” he says after rhyming off the list of what that explosive device cost him. “I have a traumatic brain injury too, but it only affects my short-term memory.”
He also broke his back in a parachute accident in 2002 — he says he doesn’t notice it anymore because everything else hurts more — and was recently found to have diabetes.
Competing in indoor rowing and road cycling, on a recumbent hand cycle, next week is a chance for Trauner to push against limits and feel part of a Canadian team again.
“For me, (the Invictus Games) is overcoming the surgeries, overcoming the physical disabilities, overcoming the mental traumas that I had to go through, me and my wife.
“If I win, that’s great, if I don’t win, I’m still glad I did it, I’m just happy to be part of it. I know that’s a Canadian answer but it’s true.”
So much of sport — professional and amateur alike — has become about winning that little leagues and minor hockey contend with hypercompetitive parents, and Paralympics have become all about medals in order to secure government funding. But these games are different. There are no medal tables to track the most successful countries and it’s the Invictus anthem — not national anthems — that will play for the champions when they touch the wall first in swimming or win the wheelchair basketball tournament.
Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the atmosphere and nature of this event comes in the rulebook, which strongly encourages competitors “to keep alcohol consumption to a minimum when representing their nations in team uniforms.”
This is only the third time the Invictus Games — established by Prince Harry after witnessing the American Warrior Games — have been held. But the principle of these games for ill and injured members of the armed forces and veterans dates back to the very origins of parasport, when it was used as rehabilitation for soldiers and civilians injured in the Second World War. Dr. Ludwig Guttmann opened a spinal injuries centre at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Britain and, over time, sport designed for rehabilitation evolved into recreational and then competitive competition, culminating in its most elite expression at the Paralympics.
“Invictus is about regaining an active life,” says Mimi Poulin, of Lazo, B.C.
By the time she arrived to swim, row and play sitting volleyball at last year’s competition in Orlando, she had already achieved her goal.
It had been just two years since a parachute accident in May 2014 left her with a shattered pelvis and extensive nerve damage in her right leg. She had been a combat medic and was training to move into search-and-rescue when she was injured. She found a new normal after months in a wheelchair and learning to walk again.
“Being able to compete in such a big event was my medal,” Poulin says. “It gave me the confidence that I can do anything I want if I set my heart to it.”
Now, at 38, she is retiring from the military and planning to go back to school to find a new career.
The co-captain of Canada’s team, Maj. Simon Mailloux, has a couple goals for the Toronto Invictus Games but other than, hopefully, getting to meet Bruce Springsteen, who is playing at the closing ceremony, very little has to do with him.
“I’m not a natural athlete, I have to admit. I’m just a good guy who is trying to run on one leg,” says the 33-year-old from Quebec City.
He says he’s doing it for his 4-yearold daughter, Norah.
“She’s only ever seen me with one leg and I want her to understand that, even though I’m different than other people and I may have struggles and sometimes I hop around at home. . . . I can also do great things.”
Mailloux lost his left leg in 2007 when his vehicle hit an explosive device in Afghanistan and, with his prosthetic leg, he returned for another tour there in 2009.
He also competed at last year’s Invictus Games in Orlando and was struck by what he saw there.
“It’s the first games I saw that you cheer more for the person that finishes last than first. You know they went through a lot just to be there.”
For some competitors, it’s what they’ve been through that gets them picked for the team.
“Nations don’t select their teams solely on ability to (win a) medal,” says Scott Jones, the senior manager for sport for the Invictus Games.
“They won’t necessarily pick the best athletes to make the team, they’ll pick who needs the recovery the most and who will benefit the most from the experience and op- portunity.”
Trauner had been going through a rough stretch — more surgeries, and housebound winters — when Michael Burns, CEO of Toronto Invictus Games, invited him to attend the official launch in May 2016.
At that Toronto event, after a round of greetings and thank you’s, it was none other than Prince Harry who urged him to compete next year.
“I accept challenges. Just being infantry, I have to accept challenges,” says Trauner, who use both prosthetic legs and a wheelchair. “I challenge you to come out next year,” he recalled the prince telling him.
“Join the team, challenge yourself, compete against the guys, I want to see you there and I said, ‘You’re on, I accept your challenge.’ I shook his hand and took a picture.”
It came at the perfect time, Trauner’s wife, Leah Cuffe, recalls.
In the early years, all his energy was taken up with navigating his physical issues. But being housebound again after more surgery led to dark days.
“When he has a goal he fights and he trains. It gives his life purpose,” she says. “He’s back to Mike again and those dark days he was having are gone.”
His recovery has become the focus of her life as much as his.
She’s in the basement when he’s on the rower and she’s with him when he cycles the road.
“I bought a recumbent bike myself so we can train together,” Cuffe says. “And on the days when he wants to do distance I shadow him in my car so that he doesn’t get hit because I couldn’t do another phone call like that.”
She’s referring to the call she got at 3:43 a.m. telling her something had happened to her husband. That led to an emergency flight to the medical centre in Landstuhl, Germany, and a walk down the longest hallway she can remember to see her husband.
He knew his new reality would also be hers.
“I am so sorry — those were his first words to me,” she recalls.
In recognition of the role that families play in a soldier’s recovery, whether it’s from a physical injury or a mental one with post traumatic stress illness, Invictus competitors are invited to bring two people with them to stay at no cost in Toronto to enjoy the experience with them.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Cuffe says about spending the week in Toronto, attending events and watching Trauner compete.
“I’m so excited for him and I’m so proud of him, just how far he’s come.”
“I’m going to shout from the rooftops.”