The Marine Corps has officially established a dynasty at the 2013 Warrior Games, taking top honors for the fourth year in a row. 

The 50 Marines who comprise the team took home 93 medals. The Army placed second with 81 medals. The Marines take home 34 gold medals, 33 silver and 26 bronze medals.

"Congratulations to all of the 2013 Warrior Games competitors," said Charlie Huebner, chief of Paralympics for the United States Olympic Committee. "While we celebrate medals, this competition is really an example of how sport can change lives. We hope these service members and veterans don't stop here. The goal is for them to return home and get involved in sport programs in their communities."

The Warrior Games, hosted by the U.S. Olympic Committee and Deloitte, are a Paralympic-style competition for wounded, ill, or injured troops and veterans from the U.S. and British armed forces. The athletes competed in cycling, shooting, track and field, archery, wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball and swimming. The six-day event, culminating Thursday, was held at the Olympic Training Center and U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

The competition got off to a good start for the Marine team as they established their presence at the cycling competition, scoring four medals. Sergeant Lori Yrigoyen took first place in the women’s recumbent 10k. Staff Sergeant Ronnie Jimenez boosted morale for the team and it’s fans by being the first athlete of all services to win a gold medal. Jimenez took first in the 10k handcycle race. But after the first day, the Marines had fallen behind to the Army by five medals. 

The Marines took 20 out of 24 possible medals in shooting competition last year. This year, the team scored 13 medals, edging out the Army by five. Gold medalists included Gunnery Sergeant Pedro Aquino, tied for first with veteran Corporal Angel Gomez, resulting in a shoot-off. Veteran Lance Corporal Richard Stalder took first in the standing competition-SH2 and veteran Master Sergeant Dionisios Nicholas took gold in Pistol-SH1. Staff Sergeant Phillip Shockley won the pistol-open competition. 

Going into day three of the competition, the Marines medaled in nearly all track and field events, taking home 36 medals while the Army took 33. Corporal Kyle Reid outran his Army competitor by a hundredth of a second in the men’s 100m open. Marine veteran Derek Liu of Fullerton, Calif., won the 100m visually impaired, and veteran Sergeant Anthony McDaniel and Ivan Sears took first and second in the 100m wheelchair race. 

The Army also took home a third consecutive gold in the much anticipated wheelchair basketball rivalry between the Army and Marines. The final score was 34-32. Last year, the Marine team lost the gold medal match in sitting volleyball to the Army. This year, the Marines quickly put out the Army by defeating them 2-0.

In the final event of swimming, the Marines took a larger lead with Sergeant Kirstie Ennis taking home gold in the women’s 50m freestyle-SLA, 100m freestyle-SLA, and 50m backstroke-SLA. 

Team captains Corporal Jorge Salazar and veteran Corporal Travis Greene accepted the Chairman’s Cup on behalf of the team, coaches and regiment staff. 

In 2005, former Marine and now-retired Army Sergeant Joseph “Joey” C. Smith lay in a Veterans Affairs hospital, wracked with pain. He watched other wounded veterans around him suffering, many despondent and without hope.

He was at the lowest point in his life.

A year earlier, he had been at a remote forward operating base in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment when he was injured. He was working alongside Afghan soldiers around some storage containers. He said two of the Afghans climbed onto the roof of one of the containers and intentionally pushed another container on top of him.

For the next four years, he transferred among multiple hospitals where he underwent three surgeries on his spinal cord, as well as one on his leg. Doctors told him he was lucky to be alive.

He also lost the use of his voice for those four years, but using pen and paper, he wrote just a few words that he said helped to inspire other wounded warriors in that hospital as well as himself.

The Marine Corps later adopted what he wrote as their own “Creed of the Wounded Warrior,” and the words quickly spread, inspiring countless others.

“Though I am wounded, I will always be a warrior. I will never give up, nor quit in the face of adversity. I will do my best in all that I do and achieve. I will not allow my injuries to limit me, and most of all, I will never forget my fallen comrades or leave a fellow injured warrior behind,” reads the creed.

That such a simple message as this inspired so many is amazing, he said.

Following his hospitalization, Smith followed his creed to “do my best in all that I do and achieve” by entering the 2010 Warrior Games, the first year of that competition. He competed in shooting, swimming, cycling and archery. At the games, the athletes are all wounded, ill or injured veterans and service members.

Smith has returned every year since and this week he’s competing in the shooting and swimming events at the Olympic Training Center and U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

He said the intense interservice and interpersonal rivalries really motivate the athletes, but “at the end of the day, it’s one team, one fight,” meaning that they are all friends who are helping each other through the healing process.

Things have been looking up for Smith, who said he plans to return to the games in the future.

In 2010, he and his wife, Debbi, received a special gift. Homes for Our Heroes, a nonprofit organization, donated a wheelchair-accessible home for them in Thomasville, N.C. He said words can’t describe how much that meant to them.

During the competitions this week, some 400 members of the media from around the world are covering the games, outnumbering the athletes nearly 2 to 1.

Smith said he thinks that is “awesome” and that he hopes the media will get the word out to the world about what it means to be a wounded warrior and how they are all trying hard to rebuild their lives, assisting one another, despite the suffering they have endured.

The best of the human spirit is revealing itself this week in Colorado Springs. A few images from the first days of competition at Warrior Games 2013 ...

NATO’s focus will remain squarely on Afghanistan as Air Force General Philip Breedlove succeeds Navy Admiral James Stavridis as the alliance’s supreme allied commander, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday.

On a cool, windy day in Mons, Belgium, Rasmussen passed the colors of Supreme Allied Command Operations from Stavridis to Breedlove. Rain threatened, but never materialized.

NATO is the heart and soul of the 50-nation coalition in Afghanistan, the secretary general said, and the alliance has been involved since the formation of the International Security Assistance Force.

“On your watch,” he said to Breedlove, “Afghan forces will be taking full responsibility for the security of their own country, and ISAF will complete its combat mission–as planned–at the end of 2014. You will help shape a new and NATO-led mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces after 2014.”

But the alliance is more than the war in Afghanistan, Rasmussen noted. NATO forces also serve off the Horn of Africa to deter piracy, patrol the Mediterranean Sea, serve in Kosovo and patrol the Baltic Sea. NATO forces deployed to Turkey are protecting that ally from Syrian missiles, he said.

These are demanding operational tasks, the secretary general said, but Breedlove also must complete the reform of NATO’s command structure to make it “leaner, more effective and more affordable.” Rasmussen expressed confidence in Breedlove’s ability to meet the challenge.

The secretary general then turned to Stavridis, the first admiral to hold the position. Rasmussen said the Stavridis “has navigated these uncharted waters with great skill.”

Rasmussen said the secret of the admiral’s success lies with his philosophy that the security of the future should be built by bridges, rather than walls. In Afghanistan, Stavridis built bridges among NATO allies, coalition partners and the Afghan government, he said.

“Your bridge-building skills were also evident in 2011 when NATO responded to a United Nations call and deployed a force in record time to protect the people of Libya,” Rasmussen said. “You have also stayed focused on the strategic horizon and NATO and [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe] have benefited from your innovation.”

During his time at the headquarters, Stavridis established a comprehensive crisis management center and an alliance special operations headquarters. And he has reached out, Rasmussen said.

“You have blogged and you have tweeted to help explain the value of our alliance and to sustain political and public support for what we do,” the secretary general said to the admiral.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Rasmussen presented Stavridis with the NATO Meritorious Service Medal. The admiral will retire from the Navy and become the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.