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More than four years ago, Walker was on a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. The blast destroyed his lower legs. But his wounds did not stop him from participating in the second annual Warrior Games, an Olympic-style event for wounded, injured and ill service members, and veterans, that took place last week at the United States Olympic Training Center. Last Wednesday, Walker’s mind was nowhere but the basketball court.

“When I was at Bethesda, Marines would come visit me who were at different levels of their rehabilitation,” Walker, a 30-year-old from White Pine, Tenn., said. “You see other people and you think, I’m going to be there someday.”

Run by the United States Olympic Committee and the Department of Defense, the Warrior Games were born of the idea that sports play a critical role in helping disabled service members recover physically and psychologically.

To a civilian, the sight of these mostly young men and women willing their bodies around a pool or basketball court can be jarring, if not emotional. But this was a fiercely competitive, and collegial, sporting event.

As Charlie Huebner, the chief of Paralympics for the U.S.O.C., said: “A lot of the kids we serve, the first thing they worry about is being able to play with their children— whether it’s running or playing basketball or just doing what a mom or dad would do. Our whole movement is about the power of sport.”

This year, the Warrior Games drew 220 participants, up from 187 in their inaugural year, with teams from the Marines, the Army, the Navy/Coast Guard, the Air Force and Special Operations competing in individual and team events.

The event classifications were devised specifically for the Warrior Games, Huebner said. In swimming, for example, athletes are grouped by disability. Single-leg amputees compete against one another, as do athletes missing both legs.

Those with spinal-cord injuries are in a separate category, and soldiers with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder have their own group.

Team sports are organized differently. Sitting volleyball, with the net a few feet off the ground, is open to all, as long as they remain seated. Wheelchair basketball is also open, although teams are required to have at least two players with lower-limb injuries on the floor at all times.

Blake McMinn, a former infantryman who lost his lower right leg when his tank was blown apart by a roadside bomb in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 2007, plays for the Army’s powerful wheelchair basketball team. Army handily defeated the Marines for the gold medal on Friday night.

McMinn, 23, of Arlington, Tex., recalled being approached on the Las Vegas strip by a man who invited him to shoot around with a local wheelchair team.

“It took me a month to talk myself into it,” McMinn said after a victory over Air Force, a gritty game in which wheelchairs went flying and players hit the floor. “Once I did, I fell in love with it.”

Not everyone at the Warrior Games has war injuries.

At the aquatic center, the Marine veteran Chuck Sketch, 43, of Wildomar, Calif., swung his torso into the pool for the start of the 50-meter freestyle race for double amputees. Halfway through Sketch’s enlistment in the early 1990s, he developed a malignant brain tumor that led to blood clots in his legs and cut off the blood supply to his optic nerve. His legs were amputated and he lost his sight.

In the years after his discharge, Sketch took up swimming by doing the doggie paddle with a life vest. After three months, he was swimming on his own.

“I only beat last year’s time by one second, from what I understand,” he said, grinning. “It’s a humongous recharge to every part of your body.”

Staff Sgt. Marcia Morris-Roberts had a leg, a finger and a toe amputated after developing frostbite, a complication from lupus, while sleeping in unheated Army barracks. She won a silver medal in sitting shot-put, then competed in swimming.