one of those athletes though we'll be watching very closely here is Dennis Connor he's a Paras cyclist and went to school right here at the University of Utah Alex cabero join me right now and Alex you spoke with Connor recently representing the USA really something that means quite a bit to him yeah it certainly does Mike you know we hear all the time from athletes how special it is to represent the United States but for Dennis Connor the red white and blue has a deeper meaning especially because in the Paralympics your opponent isn't trying to kill you for someone who is relatively new to parying Dennis Connor sure is good yeah I train really hard very consistent he won a gold medal in last year's World Championships but knows the only way to top them is to do it during the Paris paral Olympics being part of Team USA at the par Olympic Games it's a bigger representation of the country and for him representing the United States is a pretty big deal I mean the world to me I've been representing my country since I was 16 years old on the youth National climbing team and then as a marine for 9 years Connors was deployed to Iraq three times while in the military it was there where he says he suffered traumatic brain injuries but never said anything because he wasn't sure what to say guess I should have said something but he couldn't like and what I did in the military if if I left my job there was a vacuum of intelligence and people's lives were on the line so so you just dealt with it sucked it up and kept going he eventually left the military got properly diagnosed and moved to Utah to go to grad school go eventually falling in love with parasym now he's a big advocate for mental health especially for veterans and I tell every single one of them who's getting out I don't care what you do you need to have an MRI and tell them all the brain injury stuff before you get out yeah I'm representing all those the military is another motivation for Conor to not only do well in the par Olympics but just to make the team and represent USA as well now he was really looking forward to opening ceremony was which uh just wrapped up a couple of hours ago his first race though is next week Mike he is definitely somebody we will be watching closely oh yeah we'll be cheering him on and we certainly appreciate his service Alex thank you now while you