Mike Trauner has been training hard on the rowing machine in his basement and, after looking at the results from the last Invictus Games, he thinks he’s got a good shot at winning his event in Toronto.He’d like to win — everyone likes to be a winner — but at the same time he knows it doesn’t really matter. Trauner and the 550 military personnel and veterans from 17 countries competing in Toronto over the next eight days have something much weightier in mind when they take to the pool, track, sport courts and fields.“We’re really battling against our own demons,” says the 38-year-old from Pembroke, Ont., who retired from the Canadian forces this year.“People aren’t there at the games to earn medals; people are there to overcome their own problems in life.”In his case, that’s a pretty long list: 18 surgeries and dying — twice.On Dec. 5, 2008, Trauner was with the Canadian forces in Afghanistan on a dawn patrol when he stepped over a berm, heard a pop and found himself flying through the air.“I didn’t know what the hell was happening and I landed in this crater the size of my pickup truck.”He heard the calls go out over the radio for a helicopter to medivac a double amputee. He didn’t realize they meant him.He lost both his legs that day — the left above the knee, the right just below — and doctors very nearly amputated his left hand as well. They lost his vital signs twice before stabilizing him. He has severe damage in both arms, there’s still a chunk of his assault rifle buried deep within his right hand, he has hearing damage, nerve damage and a body full of scars and burns.“I can’t remember it all,” he says with a sigh after rhyming off the list of what that explosive device cost him.“I have a traumatic brain injury too, but it only affects my short-term memory.”He also broke his back in a parachute accident in 2 ...
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