Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics.

Launch slideshow

The man who views only black today is visualizing all the colors of his London swims. In his mind, he sees the aqua-blue pool frothy with wakes, the home stretch of the lane lines painted red, and the dark, wide mouths of roaring fans.

Behind prosthetic blue eyes — replacements for the natural pair he lost after an explosion in Afghanistan nearly a year ago — Navy Lt. Brad Snyder soaks in the scenery of a dream realized. The 2012 Paralympics open today in Britain. Snyder races for gold Friday.

Already, though, he can glimpse a distinct, happy glow.

Related: 'Meet the Superhumans': Paralympians burst onto world stage 

“During the Olympics, I read about the races, about (Michael) Phelps and (Ryan) Lochte and Missy Franklin. I heard the commentary and used that to pull out the details to produce this image,” Snyder said. “But instead of reading about Lochte, I just implanted myself in there.

“I imagine stepping onto the block, hearing “take your mark,” the sound of the start, hopping in the pool then just being smooth and strong down the middle of the lane, executing some good turns, and hitting the pad at the end. I’m imagining success. I’m imagining the good feeling that comes with competing well.”

As an elite athlete — among blind swimmers he is No. 1 in the world at three freestyle distances (50-, 100- and 400-meters) — Snyder draws such mental pictures as a preparation tool. As a result, nothing in or around the London pool, he said, should feel unfamiliar.

But in a life being rebuilt after severe injury, this ironic tactic is simply how the man endures.

“I’ll tell you a little story,” said his mother, Valarie Snyder. “He was describing his apartment to me: ‘It has the most beautiful rooftop view.’ That’s how our conversations go all the time. It’s been rare that he gets down, and even then he apologizes for it: ‘Sorry I was in a bad mood.’ ”

Related: Veterans push Paralympics back to battlefield roots
Related: Wounded warrior seeks glory representing America in London

The bright side is never far off. But total darkness came in a single stride. On Sept. 7, 2011, the former Navy bomb defuser was rushing forward to help two Afghan soldiers wounded in an initial IED blast. In his dash, Snyder stepped on a second hidden bomb in an irrigation ditch spanning a farm field. His eyes were irreparably damaged by the detonation and later were removed by a surgeon.

Once a member of the Naval Academy swim team, Snyder returned to the water about a month later — this time, seeking a familiar, soft place in a world suddenly filled with surprise, hard edges.

“I was there the first day he got back in the pool,” his mother recalls. “Just to see the sheer joy on his face. On the ride home afterward he told me: ‘I can do this, mom. I can swim competitively. Everything new that I can do just makes me realize: this isn’t such a bad thing.’ ”

The warm water also rekindled an ultra-competitive, inner furnace, driving Snyder to begin training in Baltimore with Brian Loeffler, head swimming coach at Loyola University. His new goal: earn a spot on the U.S. Paralympic swim team and compete at the world’s second-largest sporting event, the Paralympics. He punched his London ticket in June after a series of spectacular sprints at the time trials in Bismarck, N.D.

He strolls into London’s Olympic Stadium today with 226 other disabled American athletes — one of 20 active or former service members on the U.S. team, and one of six wounded during combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“There’s a girl who was in a coma for four years. There are people dealing with moderate cerebral palsy,” Snyder said. “It puts everything in perspective when I’m contending with my own little issue to see what everybody on the team puts up with. It humbles you. Every person on the roster is one of the most amazing people I’ve met.”

Yet each teammate also is an accomplished athlete who outperformed hundreds of Paralympic hopefuls to make the cut. For context, simply peruse two of Snyder’s post-injury times. In the 50-meter freestyle: 26.54 seconds — better than 10 Olympians who swam in London; and in the 100-meter freestyle: 57.75 — quicker than three 2012 Olympians.

The 100-meter free on Friday offers Snyder his first crack at a medal, and it unleashes an aggressive schedule of seven events over nine days. In addition to his three world-best times, he’s currently ranked No. 2 among blind swimmers in the 100-meter butterfly and No. 4 in the 200-meter individual medley. For each event, Loeffler works as Snyder’s “tapper,” using a walking cane to touch Snyder’s shoulders to alert him that the wall is near and that a flip turn or final push is required.

“His order of events sets up well since the sprints are early in the week (and) I do expect he will do well in his early events,” said Loeffler, who also serves as the co-head coach of the American Paralympic swim team. “(But) we have focused his training toward the 400 free.”

For Snyder, his coach and his family, that is the race of races, scheduled for Sept. 7 — exactly one year to the day he stepped on the bomb.

“It’s difficult to imagine and quantify the emotions I’ll be running through that day. But it’s going to be a moment that I’m going to enjoy. Because to me, competing on that day means that I was presented a challenge and I experienced some success in my transition to blindness. I conquered my adversity to some extent. Obviously, the adversity is not conquered. I’m still blind at the end of the day,” Snyder said. “But it means I’ve walked the path from being chained to the bed at exactly a year ago to competing on an international level at event like the Paralympics. It means I won a little bit.”

All of the people who huddled near that bed last September at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, D.C. will be in the crowd in London — his two brothers, his sister, an aunt and his mother — who calls herself “a weeper” and who fully expects a gush of tears, win or lose.

“From getting the phone call that morning from his commanding officer to not knowing what we were about to go through to what we went through the past year and then to see all that he has accomplished, well, it’s going to be amazing,” Valarie Snyder said.

“He shared something with me not long ago. He said that every little boy dreams of doing something great in their life in sports. If you’re a runner or a swimmer, you dream of one day going to the Olympics. But when you grow up," she added, "you realize that was just a dream."

“He believes has been given the opportunity to actually fulfill his dream.”

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Isaac's storm surge overtops levee, floods some La. homes
• Teens charged after 5-year-old girl found dead in trash
• Israel court says US activist not unlawfully killed
• Jury seated for Amish beard-cutting trial
• Ga. murder case uncovers alleged terror plot
• Video: Grizzly kills hiker in Alaska

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

International Paralympic Committee

Competitors roll into the opening ceremonies of the first Paralympics, held in Rome in 1960.

Five U.S. wars and 64 years later, the Paralympics are set to complete a bittersweet roundtrip, in both place and purpose.

The 2012 Paralympics, the planet’s second-largest sporting event, open Aug. 29 in London – where a doctor first imagined that an Olympic-like competition might push paralyzed British fighter pilots to recapture their independence. 

The American team soon bound for England contains 20 athletes who have worn the stars and stripes. They include world-class cyclists, sprinters and soccer players. All are veterans or active-duty service members, six of whom were wounded in combat.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created an unintended byproduct: a growing pack of elite, disabled athletes – men and women who yearn to challenge their battered bodies and, they hope, to outrace and outscore some of the best in the world.

“In our circle, the Paralympics is just as coveted as the Olympics and we train just as hard for it,” said retired Marine Rob Jones, who lost both his legs above the knee after an IED blast two years ago in Afghanistan. He began his quest to make the U.S. Paralympic rowing squad in 2011. “I wanted to compete, you know, do something.

“If you have a goal then you can develop a plan. If you have a plan then you can actually be going toward something, as opposed to just going.”

International Paralympic Committee

Three paralyzed British fighter pilots compete in the javelin toss at the Stoke Mandeville Games, predecessor of the Paralympics, near London, circa the early 1950s.

In two words: forward motion. In 1948, that was the then-radical notion of Dr. Ludwig “Poppa” Guttmann, a neurologist who treated spine-injured British flyers at Stoke Mandeville Hospital northwest of London. He ditched the accepted medical thinking of the day: that paralysis meant a stagnant life and an early death.

On the same afternoon that athletes from 59 nations marched into nearby Wembley Stadium for the opening ceremonies of the London Summer Olympics, Guttmann gathered 16 former service members on the lawn outside his hospital for an archery contest. One year later, more patients from more hospitals participated in the newly dubbed “Stoke Mandeville Games.” In 1952, a military hospital in Holland asked if it could send its own group of veterans to compete, according to the International Paralympic Committee website. By 1954, Egyptians, Australians, Canadians, Israelis and Finns also were vying for victories in table tennis, javelin and water polo.

“Dr. Guttmann’s mantra was: They were going to be productive citizens and they were going to use sport to accomplish that,” said John Register, associate director of community and military programs for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Paralympics division. He also is an Army veteran of Desert Shield and Desert Storm – and an amputee who swam at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta and who earned a silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.

“Warrior athletes were at a high-functioning level before they were injured. The fighting soldier is just a person who is extremely professional in what they do,” Register said. “After injury, sports can be a very strong conduit to get back to that active lifestyle.

Slideshow: Olympic Emotional Moments

Click for more from the 2012 summer games in London.

Launch slideshow

“When you incorporate the esprit de corps at military installations where these warrior athletes are healing," Register added, "then they push each other to be better than they were the day before." 

'Who am I now?'
In 1960, 400 athletes from 21 nations arrived for the first Paralympic Games in Rome – held after the closing of the Summer Olympics in that same host city. As with every Paralympics since, the swimmers, racers and ball players used the Olympic venues to claim their own gold, silver and bronze medals.

While the Paralympics have steadily expanded, the wars in the Middle East have slowly nudged the international sporting event back toward its original intent, helping wounded veterans find and reclaim their former identities, Register said. 

London 2012: Who were the real winners, losers?

The 2012 Paralympics – the largest ever – will span 140 countries, more than 4,000 athletes and 20 sports. Ticket sales already have topped 2 million, outstripping the crowds in Beijing. And this year, current and former military members make up nearly 9 percent of the 227-person American roster – almost 2 percent higher than on the 2008 U.S. team.

Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics in September.

Launch slideshow

That list includes Lt. Brad Snyder, a former Navy bomb defuser who lost his vision after an IED explosion in Afghanistan on Sept. 7. Once a Naval Academy swimmer, Snyder has a chance to grab gold in at least two swimming events, including the 400-meter freestyle – to be held one year to the day after he was permanently blinded.

“Having the Paralympics out there was definitely a kick in my direction,” Snyder said. “It allows people to heal through sport and establish a metric for success. It’s really an awesome opportunity.”

Register has been preaching that message for years in his job at the USOC. He enlisted in the Army in 1988 after an All-American track career at the University of Arkansas. Following Desert Storm, he stayed in the Army, which allowed him to train part-time for a spot on the 1996 U.S. Olympic track team. In May 1994, as he was leaping over a practice hurdle, Register landed awkwardly, severing an artery in his left knee. The injury led to an amputation.

His physical therapist suggested Register add swimming to his exercise regimen. He was so fast in the pool, however, that he snared a spot on the 1996 U.S. Paralympic swim team.

After devastating injuries of that sort, especially after people lose parts of their bodies, they often ask: “Who am I now? Am I still that husband to my wife, or that wife to my husband? Can I still be employed?" Register said. "Those are the questions. Through, sports, they search for the answers.

“What sport does is show that person, individually, that they can accomplish a lot more than they think. They realize: I can get back to the lifestyle that I thought I had lost. And in time, they come to the realization that they haven’t lost anything.”