ORLANDO, Fla. — Penn State ability athlete Max Rohn (Longmont, Colorado) was a big winner on May 10, capturing a pair of gold medals at the 2016 Invictus Games. Rohn won both the discus throw and the shot put in the IF1 classification at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex.
Rohn dispatched the field in the discus with a throw of 52.37 meters (171 feet, 10 inches), besting his preliminary throw by more than four meters. Rohn won the discus by more than 16 meters.Then Rohn took top honors in the shot put with a distance of 13.02 meters (42 feet, 8 ½ inches). Rohn won gold by more than two meters.In the preliminaries, Rohn dominated the discus throw, earning the top qualifying spot with a throw of 49.11 meters (161 feet, 1 ½ inches) to best the second-place finisher by nearly 16 meters. Rohn also won the preliminary shot put with a distance of 13.20 meters (43 feet, 3 ¾ inches), winning by almost two meters.Rohn’s aim is to compete in this summer’s Paralympics in Rio, and the Invictus Games are a crucial step toward qualifying for the United States team. The Invictus Games are open only to service members and serve as a crucial tune up for Paralympic hopefuls ahead of the U.S. Nationals in June.Rohn competes with a prosthetic attached to his right leg, which was amputated below the knee following a grenade blast while serving in Iraq. Rohn was a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy when his vehicle was struck outside Fallujah.Rohn recently completed his junior year in the College of Engineering as he aims to pursue a career dedicated to advancing the technology of prosthetic limbs.