Meghan Markle kicked off the 2025 Invictus Games with an impromptu speech during the opening events.
“Well, hello, you. Hi, everybody. How are we feeling?” Meghan, 43, said in her Friday, February 7, remarks, per social media footage, “So, I was not planning on speaking tonight and we just arrived a couple hours ago. I touched Canadian soil and I was like, ‘Ah, feels like home.’ We are so excited.”
Meghan, who lived in Toronto for several years while filming Suits, recently traveled with husband Prince Harry from their home in Montecito, California to Vancouver for this year’s Invictus Games. Harry, 40, had founded the competition as a way to support wounded veterans. (The prince previously served 10 years in the British Army ahead of his 2018 marriage to Meghan.)
This weekend kicks off Invictus programming in the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Whistler.
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“We also recognize most of you are probably so exhausted from how much travel you’ve done, how much adrenaline you have pumping [and] how excited you are for what is going to be one of the most outstanding, memorable, unforgettable and connected week,” Meghan mused on Friday, dressed in a chic black dress. “We are so thrilled to be here.”
Meghan had the honor of introducing someone “very important” to her, Harry, and teased that the Duke of Sussex couldn’t wait to cheer on the athletes and even try out some of the sports for himself.
“He’ll be cheering you on at wheelchair basketball, he’ll be going down the luge — the thing that I will never do,” she quipped. “My husband will probably do [it] three times because he wants to do it with you and he’s in it with you. You’ll see him through all those moments; he’ll be there with you. What you won’t have seen all the moments that happened in the lead-up to these Games.”
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According to Meghan, Harry balanced planning the Invictus programs with “the big rush in the morning and getting ready for school and packing the lunches.” (Meghan and Harry share son Prince Archie, 5, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 3.)
“And my husband’s in all of that with us and then he’ll be on his phone and Archie will say, ‘Papa, why are you on your phone?’” Meghan recalled. “He’ll be like, ‘Because it’s Invictus. I’m getting ready for Invictus.’ It means so much to him. You are his family, just as we are his family.”
Meghan further hoped the Invictus attendees could recognize “how much of [Harry’s] heart” was poured into making the event a rousing success.
“I need you to know how much it means to him and how much each of you means to him,” Meghan added. “It is my complete honor to introduce my husband [and] the father of our very sweet, excited children who are cheering you on from California.”
