Swimmer Michael Roggio's last place finish was still a big win

Athletes came to conquer at Invictus Games. But as Wednesday's swimming finals proved, sometimes losing is still a major victory.

The games, which ended Thursday after a week of competition, were created by Prince Harry to give wounded service members a chance to compete for their country. In each of Invictus' 10 events, athletes are categorized into four levels according to ability, so that all entrants compete at a comparable level. For swimming, competitors requiring the most significant physical adaptations for the sport are placed in Group A, those with the least are in Group D.

But sometimes an athlete trains so hard that they rise to the next category of ability. And that can result in a loss that's still a win.

Michael Roggio, retired Petty Officer from the US Navy and swimmer at Invictus, suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury that could have qualified him to compete in the B or C grouping. Instead Roggio took part in the most able-bodied category (D) of aquatics. He qualified for Wednesday's swimming finals, but came in eighth in a heat of eight, good for last place.

It's a loss he worked hard for.

"I started training to compete in the spinal cord category of the [Rio] Paralympics," Roggio said, "And I trained so hard in my recovery and made so much progress that I now swim and compete in the open category. I compete against people who haven’t had a major injury, and haven’t gone through some of the things I have. So, in that aspect it’s far more challenging, but it makes winning that much more meaningful to me."

Or maybe losing, too, when the loss means he's competing at his highest possible ability.

In 2009, Roggio fell down a ladderwell at an air hanger, hitting his head and losing consciousness. He was unable to move his legs when he regained consciousness but was diagnosed with two fractured vertebrae. A mistakenly filed medical record delayed treatment of his Traumatic Brain Injury for eight months, according to Roggio.

That first year, Roggio said, was the worst. "I would say that mostly what I did for the first 8-10 months was all battling myself mentally. It was very hard to go from being an athlete, someone who was very active, to being bed-bound. I would say that that mental health aspect was by far the hardest part of my recovery."

What brought him back out of the place of helplessness was the thing he’s always loved -- swimming. "A big part of my recovery was getting back into the pool," Roggio said. "Once I got to the point where I could really stand up and at least take a couple steps, I went into the pool -- and my recovery really kicked up a notch."

What followed was training, in ever-increasing difficulty. Roggio had to return to the very basics to retrain his legs and body to move the way he’s moved his entire life. "When I first got into the pool I could barely push off the wall," he said. "Then it got to the point where I could make it halfway across the pool, then across the pool. It was just a complete progressive process, and eventually I started racing people at the pool, and I started getting good."

"I even started to create a hierarchy at the local Navy base where you had to race other people to race me," Roggio said, "And it turned into things where the Jacksonville pool and the Mayport pool, we'd get together and race."

At that point, when news of Roggio’s competitions began to spread, he was approached by an ambassador for Navy Safe Harbor, an organization supporting wounded Navy personnel, asking if he’d be interested in training for the Paralympics. Roggio knew that qualifying would be difficult, and he’d have to set himself a strenuous training regimen, one that he continued in preparation for Invictus.

As part of that prep Roggio goes on a two- to four-mile run every morning, swims in the afternoon, weight trains and does a second swim in the evening. Roggio does all of this without a coach or a trainer. A self-professed type-A personality, he drives himself to these levels to compete.

He considers the rewards of this training priceless. Not only did Roggio feel the joy of increasing achievement in his sport, he also reconnected with people, a vital part of his recovery, and one of the purposes of Invictus Games.

"When I broke my neck, I lost touch with everybody, and all of a sudden I was back out in the world, meeting people, making new friends," he said. "And then I joined the world of adaptive sports, and I started meeting people with similar backgrounds, people who went through what I went through.

"Up until that point I just felt so alone, like no one knows what I’m going through. I thought, several times, at the beginning of my recovery -- why am I going to go on living? I don’t want to rely on other people to take care of me, that’s not who I am. But I do want a chance, and that’s what I was giving with adaptive sports."

Roggio got that chance at Invictus.