With one year to go before the 2025 Invictus Games, Prince Harry took to the ice to try his hand at wheelchair curling alongside Michael Bublé.
The Duke of Sussex, 39, was joined on the ice by the singer on Friday, February 16, the third and final day of the Invictus Games One Year To Go Winter Training Camp, held at Vancouver’s Hillcrest Community Centre. As the two attempted the ice-bound sport in a wheelchair, Meghan Markle cheered her husband on from the sidelines alongside Bublé’s wife, Luisana Lopilato.
Founded by Prince Harry in 2014, the Invictus Games is an international sporting event for wounded, injured and sick service persons and veterans. Harry, a former captain in the British Armed Forces, was asked by Hello! magazine at the event if wheelchair curling was any different from typical curling.
“Sitting is harder,” Harry confirmed in a video shared via Instagram.
Wheelchair curling wasn’t the only sport Harry tried while visiting the Hillcrest Community Center. Over the three days he was there, the royal tried out sit-skiing and a skeleton run, in which a person races a skeleton bobsled (or bobsleigh) face down and head first down a frozen track, similar to an ice luge. The Duchess of Sussex, 42, was seen taking a video on her phone as her husband raced by.
Per the Invictus Games’ official website, wheelchair curling, alpine skiing and skeleton are part of several new sports that will be added to the 2025 games, along with snowboarding, Nordic skiing and biathlon. These are in addition to the sports the Games were initially founded on: indoor rowing, sitting volleyball, swimming, wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball.
The next cycle of the Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver in 2025, which will be the first year the games will have winter sports. As part of the celebration, Prince Harry delivered a speech to the crowd, where he noted that the 2024 training camp marked the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games Foundation.
“For those of you that don’t know, it is a logistical nightmare to be able to pull this together, and the team have done it and we’ve now got one year to work all together and to give people incredible — in some instances, life-changing — experience to these competitors and their families,” Harry said in his speech, per Town and Country Magazine.
“Every single one of you inspire me and you inspire us every single day,” the Spare author continued. “So please continue to be there to support each other. I know how much you love to serve very, in many instances you live to serve. So we will continue to serve and to inspire people up, down, around the country and around the world.”
The 2025 Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver from February 8-16.
The trip to Canada follows Harry’s brief visit to England. Buckingham Palace confirmed on February 5 that King Charles III was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer after visiting the hospital for an enlarged prostate. Us Weekly confirmed on February 6 that Harry had flown to see his father, 75, one day after the news of his cancer diagnosis broke.
On Friday, Harry spoke publicly about his father’s diagnosis for the first time while appearing on Good Morning America. “I love my family,” he said. “The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go and see him and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that.”
Harry did not provide any further details about his father’s illness. Royal expert Gareth Russell exclusively told Us that this family crisis could “bridge a gap” between Harry and Charles after years of tension following Harry’s 2020 step down as a senior royal. Russell also added, “It could also be a case of, as it was with [Queen] Elizabeth II‘s funeral, that this is more of a temporary emotional rebounding that will then fall apart, partly because of the geographical distance.”
