Prince Harry Named One of Time Magazine’s ‘Most Influential People in Sports’

Time Magazine has released their first list of most influential people in sports, the Time100 sports list of the 100 most influential people in the world of sports, from athletes to coaches to sports journalists to team owners to… Invictus Games founder Prince Harry. Seriously, Harry made the list!! The list also includes: LeBron James (he’s on the cover of the issue), Lionel Messi, Hilary Knight, Aryna Sabalenka, Steph Curry, Eileen Gu, Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Wemby, Rory, Ronaldo, Shams (lol) and many more. You can see Time’s entire list here. Here is the writing about Prince Harry:

A few months after completing his second combat tour in Afghanistan in 2013, Prince Harry lit the cauldron at the Warrior Games, a sports competition organized by the US Olympic Committee for wounded service members and veterans. He left the event in Colorado Springs inspired to build on the concept – adaptive sports for wounded troops. “I thought, ‘Wow, look at the power of sports, look at how it’s literally changing lives in front of my eyes,'” Harry tells TIME. “It was so clear to me. Let’s invite as many countries as possible to do it internationally, because clearly more countries need to benefit from this.”

Just over a year later, the opening ceremony for Harry’s inaugural Invictus Games took place at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. (Invictus, a Latin word, means “unconquered.”) They hosted more than 400 military personnel and veterans from 13 nations, including Afghanistan, Germany and New Zealand. There have since been six more editions of the Invictus Games, with the last taking place in Vancouver and Whistler in Canada in 2025: these games included winter sports such as alpine skiing, snowboarding and skeleton for the first time.

“When you wear your nation’s flag on your arm, on your chest, once it’s removed, there’s something missing,” says Harry, who served a decade in the British Army. “What we’ve managed to achieve through Invictus over the years is not just to give people back their purpose and meaning, but to give them back their identity.”

The Invictus Games combine Harry’s passion for sport – he participated in rugby, football, cricket and polo growing up – with his desire to give back to veterans. “Sports kept me together,” he says. “I was one of those kids at school who didn’t like class work. If it wasn’t for the sports field and the amount of sports on offer, there’s no way I would have stayed at school.”

Harry hopes to continue to develop the Invictus Games and perhaps make it a two-week event instead of one, to give more service members opportunities to compete. “One thing that we really celebrate at Invictus is not only that we change lives, but we also save lives,” he says. “It’s not based on anything other than the amount of individuals who come up to me and say, ‘If it wasn’t for Invictus, I would have committed suicide’.”

In July, Harry will travel to the UK to celebrate next summer’s Invictus Games in Birmingham, which will welcome around 550 competitors from around 25 countries and include three new sports on the programme: esports, laser running (which combines cross-country running with pistol shooting) and pickleball. “Being in that community, those are the moments I cherish,” he says. “You wish every community, every community had the same vibe about it.”

(From Time Magazine)

Pickleball!! I didn’t know it was added to the Birmingham games. Anyway, it’s really nice and really important – it shows once again that one of the biggest parts of Harry’s legacy is his creation of Invictus, which is why there’s been a years-long hate campaign directed at the games. To this day, the most cantankerous royal journalists and biographers still invent disgusting lies about the games and Harry’s involvement in them. Time Magazine – like the ESPYs – is effectively doubling down and saying, no, Invictus is legit, it’s important and good, and Harry is a global leader in sports. You know who didn’t make the Time100 Sports list? A certain soccer patron who was too lazy to attend the Women’s World Cup and is too lazy to attend this year’s World Cup (unless England reach the quarter-finals).

Images courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.