British veterans and serving personnel who were injured during service have hit the ski slopes for their last training session ahead of the 2025 Invictus Games. The seventh edition of the games, which begins in Vancouver, Canada on February 8, will bring together more than 500 competitors from 23 nations and is the first to include winter sports.
On Friday, Team UK’s challengers took to the ski slopes at the Snowdome in Tamworth, Staffordshire. The 62 competitors – all veterans and serving personnel who sustained life-changing injuries and illnesses while serving the UK Armed Forces – previously trained at Loughborough University using adaptive equipment for wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball and wheelchair rugby.
“It’s like a fire has been reignited inside me,” said Stacey Mitchell, an RAF veteran whose left leg had to be amputated after a training injury. Ms Mitchell, aged 30, joined the RAF at 19 and found herself working on Chinook helicopters with dreams of travelling the world.
But six years later she had to undergo a leg amputation after a training injury developed into an irreversible nerve condition. Ms Mitchell said: “I didn’t realise how much of my identity was taken away when I became injured until I got involved in a team again.”.
