Master Sgt. Ivan Morera isn’t used to being in last place. He’s a Green Beret. A relentless competitor. But at the 2024 Warrior Games, with his prosthetic hand hooked into a rowing machine, he was trailing the pack.

So he focused on increasing the rhythm of each pull: legs, body, arms. Arms, body, legs. When the buzzer sounded, he had passed everyone to win gold. “I do it to show my kids that everything and anything is possible,” said Sergeant Morera, who lost his left arm in a 2013 convoy accident in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of wounded or disabled troops competed alongside him at the U.S. military’s Warrior Games in Orlando, Fla., this summer, in events including archery, swimming, seated volleyball and wheelchair rugby.

Since the annual competition was created in 2010, the Games have given the Defense Department a new way to support and rehabilitate a select group of wounded troops, helping them remain in the service and on duty. The event has also become an important symbol of the changing perceptions about who is fit to serve.