‘There’s something resilient’ in Invictus Games athletes

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – If Jacquelyn “Jacqui” Marty had a sport of choice, it would be downhill skiing.

The Invictus Games Team U.S. co-captain started skiing at age 13.

“I just fell in love with it,” she said.

She went skiing with people who were better than her, and she was fearless when it came to speed. Eventually, she learned to ski fast while maintaining control.

Later, after serving as an officer in the U.S. Air Force and during her service in the Air Force Reserves, she learned to continue skiing following a traumatic brain injury, suffered in an automobile accident.

Now, Marty will compete in the downhill skiing, skeleton, indoor rowing and indoor swimming events at the inaugural winter Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025. The games will be held in British Columbia from Feb. 8 to 16, following a Feb. 1 to 5 training camp at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Marty is ready for the large-scale, international military adaptive sports competition. It honors the nation’s wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans and those of participating allied countries.

“I’ve always been goal-oriented, and I call myself a recovering over-achiever, a recovering perfectionist,” she said. “When I first learned that I was going to be on the Invictus team, I started my goal.”

She worked on getting fit and tailored her training toward what she needed for the games. That included participating in three camps just this winter to work on downhill skiing and the skeleton. She feels confident, stronger and fitter, and is excited to see how she does.

“At JBLM, it’s been a little bit more fine-tuning,” Marty said of her time training on base. The athletes helped one another with perfecting specific techniques, like starts in swimming and angles in rowing.

Although she wasn’t stationed at JBLM during her military career, her dad grew up in Tacoma, and she has relatives here, she said.

These days, when she isn’t competing, Marty is a stay-at-home-mom to her two sons, ages 14 and 7.

“What I told my son is that, ‘Yes, I love winning and I love competing, but this isn’t a competition. I’m not competing against these other nations – I’m competing with them.’”

“We’ve all experienced something that has been life-changing,” whether it was trauma, an injury, an illness or a diagnosis,” she said. “Something has changed the trajectory of our lives. And we have somehow overcome whatever that was to continue on.”

Marty’s trauma happened in 2015. Her 5-year-old at the time, who was also in the car, gave the first responders the information they needed to help.

“He’s my little hero who was able to do all that for me,” she said.

“I was expecting really great things to happen,” Marty said of her career as an Air Force pilot and goal of becoming a general. She never flew again.

“You never know why things like that happen to you,” she said.

After the accident, Marty’s recovery care coordinator invited her to participate in the Air Force Wounded Warrior Program, but she thought she wasn’t as worthy to participate as those who were injured in combat.

“I finally took her up on the offer” in 2017, she said. “I’m a much different person today than I was in 2017.”

“There’s something resilient” in the Invictus Games athletes, and time spent together with her wounded warrior brothers and sisters is refreshing and “creates a bond that many people just don’t have,” she said.

“It’s OK to not be OK when you’re in this community,” which is something civilians might not quite understand, she said.

Teammates have called her in the middle of the night, and she’s been there for them.

“It’s a beautiful thing to know you’ve got people there to support you,” she said, adding that her lifelong bonds will soon grow from people “anywhere in the U.S.” to anywhere in the world.

To learn more about the Invictus Games, visit: https://invictusteamus.com/