From battlefield to Tokyo: Combat vets vie at Paralympics

By TIM SULLIVAN
Associated Press

FREMONT, Ind. (AP) — Twenty years after the attacks of Sept. 11, and just days after the Taliban took control of Kabul, a small group of American combat veterans competing in the Tokyo Paralympics — a corps of elite athletes who have triumphed over catastrophic injuries they suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s the triathlete who lost a leg when her convoy was ambushed on a bomb-cratered road. The swimmer who went blind after stepping on a land mine in rural Afghanistan. The sprinter who lost both legs in another Baghdad convoy.  What unites them is a fierce competitiveness and an ability to push past disabilities that can look insurmountable to an outsider.