The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be in Canada later this month for the Invictus Games’ One Year to Go event, so they will be spending Valentine’s Day 2024 supporting a cause that is dear to their hearts.
HELLO! understands that the two will participate in the Participating Nations Winter Training Camp, which offers the International Invictus Community—including team managers, coaches, and competitors—a chance to experience winter adaptive sports in advance of the Games in 2020. The camp will take place over three days in Vancouver and Whistler.
Photo: © Misan Harriman
The 2025 games are scheduled for February 8–16, 2023. These dates are 18 months apart from the 2023 games, which took place in Germany. During the 2023 games, Meghan made a suggestion that she and her partner might bring their daughter Lilibet and son Archie to the upcoming event.
She expressed her regret for missing the opening ceremony and said she was spending some additional time with her kids back in Los Angeles. “I’m really proud to be part of this Invictus family with all of you,” she continued. I appreciate having each and every one of you here. Even though they aren’t physically present with you, a huge number of people we know back home are cheering you all on in spirit.
“Enjoy your time, you have our support, and we can’t wait to bring our kids along to show them how amazing this is as well. I am so grateful to all of you.”
Situated in the same time zone as the young prince and princess being raised by their parents, the 2025 games will take place in Vancouver and Whistler, a three-hour flight from Los Angeles.
Photo: © Misan Harrima
David Wiseman, a director at the Invictus Games Foundation and close friend of Harry, recently spoke with HELLO! about how they were inspired after attending the Warrior Games, an event held in the US for injured service personnel and veterans, in May 2013. Harry then took the audacious decision to launch his own games within the year.
He gave the following explanation: “We were sitting in a Colorado hotel the following morning, thinking back on what we had just seen. It wasn’t a meeting or anything when Harry said, “Look, this is absolutely brilliant, what we’ve seen here is absolutely brilliant,” as we were sitting down to breakfast. We must translate this into other languages.
“This is going to be huge; we’ll have a closing concert. We need to invite allies and countries from all over the world. We’re going to hold it in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It needs to be on the BBC. He was able to see it before anybody else did.
“We were unaware of the duration that he was considering,” David went on.
Photo: © Getty Images
“Recalling that it was May 2013, we returned to the Warrior Games that afternoon. He was standing at the podium, and I believe he had written in his speech that he would like to do this. He also added a note saying ‘next year.'” He lost his mind! We thought, “What? Next year? There were three or four of us at the Royal Foundation overseeing this project for a considerable amount of time. We may have barely made it to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in September 2014, but we were there nonetheless.”
Nine countries participated in the 2014 Invictus Games launch; Jill Biden, who is currently the First Lady of the United States, attended as a US delegate, and the Foo Fighters headlined the closing concert.
