Breaking News: King Charles Reacts to Meeting Athlete Who Competed in Prince Harry’s Invictus Games….Read More

The King spoke with an alum who previously won gold for Great Britain while visiting the Centre for Injury Studies at Imperial College London

King Charles had a kind word for a veteran with a connection to his younger son, Prince Harry.

On Feb. 19, the King met Dr. Dave Henson during a visit to the Centre for Injury Studies at Imperial College London, where they spoke about the power of sport to help heal. King Charles, 76, made the stop to highlight the U.K.’s support for injured service personnel in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion ahead of the third anniversary of the conflict next week.

Henson, who demonstrated the use of virtual reality biofeedback technology to aid rehabilitation following limb loss, had a conversation with the King about his personal journey, which included competing in Harry’s Invictus Games, the adaptive sporting competition that he founded in 2014. Henson is a British Army veteran and double amputee who sustained life-altering injuries during a deployment to Afghanistan in 2010. He later captained Team Great Britain at the inaugural Invictus Games in London in 2014 and won gold medals, then repeated the feat at the Invictus Games Orlando in 2016.

“Are you still taking part in games and sports?” the King asked Henson, who was made an MBE for his services to the military in 2014 and earned a PhD in Amputee Biomechanics from Imperial College London in 2020.

“So I’m a touch too old, I think,” the veteran said in footage published by Hello! magazine. “I did the Invictus in 2014, the Invictus Games in 2016, Paralympics in 2016 and I stayed one of the trustees [of the Invictus Games] until the end of ’23, so I’ve certainly been involved with it,” he explained.

Fantastic,” King Charles replied.

“I’m back in the defense industry now, working, I’ve got three children,” Henson said about his schedule today.

Speaking to PEOPLE at the 2016 Invictus Games about Henson, Prince Harry praised his pal as “world-class.” Henson set a record of 25.04 seconds in the 200-meter run and had a proud podium moment with Harry after.

Henson was a guest at Prince Harry’s royal wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018 and spent time with the couple at the Invictus Games in The Hague in 2022. He also attended the Invictus Games Foundation’s 10th-anniversary service in London in May 2024, supporting Prince Harry at the ceremony commemorating a decade of the Games.

PEOPLE understands that Prince Harry extended invitations to several members of the royal family, including his father the King, for the anniversary service. However, they did not attend amid the ongoing family rift. (Despite a positive meeting between the father and son in February 2024 following news of the King’s cancer diagnosis, a friend of Harry’s told PEOPLE over the summer that the Duke of Sussex’s “calls go unanswered.”)

The Duke of Sussex is a former captain in the British Army and created the adaptive sports tournament to uplift his fellow veterans. Harry and Meghan recently traveled to Canada for the Invictus Games 2025, which ran from Feb. 8 to Feb. 16. Over 500 athletes from 23 nations convened at the competition for an action-packed week, where winter sports were on the roster for the first time.