US serviceman blinded in Afghanistan wins gold

US swimmer Bradley Snyder on Friday won gold in the men's S11 100m freestyle at the London Paralympics -- a year after losing his sight when an improvised explosive device exploded in his face in Afghanistan.

The 28-year-old former US Navy lieutenant won the race in 57.43secs, with clear water between him and second-placed finisher Yang Bozun of China and Hendri Herbst Hendri of South Africa in third.

Snyder was on a tour of duty as a bomb disposal specialist when on September 7 last year a home-made bomb exploded in his face.

The bloody legacy of nearly a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have led to a number of wounded former service personnel taking up para-sport.

In the US team, more than 20 of the 227 athletes are veterans, while Britain's team includes Jon-Allen Butterworth, a former Royal Air Force weapons technician who lost an arm in a rocket attack in Basra, southern Iraq, in 2007.

Butterworth, 26, on Friday won silver in the C4/5 1km time-trial.

Later on Friday British former soldier Derek Derenalagi, who lost his legs when the army Land Rover he was travelling in hit a landmine in Afghanistan in the same year, competes in the men's F57 discus final.

Medics officially pronounced the Fiji-born squaddie dead and placed him in a body bag until a faint pulse was found and he was air-lifted to Britain, where he battled back to health helped by a British military rehabilitation programme.

Top US military officer General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, is head of President Barack Obama's delegation to the Games in the British capital.

Through programmes like the US Wounded Warrior Project and Britain's Battle Back, there are increasing signs of the role sport can play to help injured veterans.

"(Sport) is such a great tool so that people can get back in the swing of life, feel useful, feel productive and continue building on that team spirit that they learn in the military," said Obama's disability policy advisor Kareem Dale.

"It's just a great way for people to rehab and to get back into the swing of life," he added in a recent US Department of Defence statement.

Sneyder won all five events at the US Paralympic swimming trials and set a new world best for visually impaired athletes in the 100m and 400m freestyle, prompting high praise from US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta.

"Doing Paralympic swimming has allowed me to feel confident when I move into a room and have to a present a proposal or something like that," Snyder said in a US Defence Department statement this week.

"It gives me that feeling of strength, that feeling of confidence I had when I was in the military. And it kind of reiterates the idea that I am the person I used to be. I just have to figure out a new way to get around.

"So, that's what sports affords me: that confidence moving into my new jobs and my regular life as a blind person now."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-serviceman-blinded-afghanistan-wins-gold-184545826--oly.html

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