Four years after receiving a heart transplant, a Birch Bay man has turned his second chance into four medals and deep memories at the 2026 Transplant Games of America in Denver, Colorado.
Gary Martin was among 32 transplant recipients and living donors from Oregon and Washington to compete at the games as Team Northwest, according to a news release from Transplant Games of America and Donate Life Northwest.
“Many people think a transplant is an ending point,” Martin, a retired psychologist, said in the release. “It isn’t. It’s an opportunity to live life again and to add meaningful years to your life. The challenge is deciding what you’re going to do with that opportunity.”
He competed in the men’s 70-79 age division, winning gold in the discus, shot put and high jump. His silver medal was in doubles tennis.
Martin also won three national championships at the games, which occurred June 18-23.
He hadn’t competed in track and field for decades and had not played competitive tennis in 23 years before taking part in the games, which took months of training.
Thousands of transplant recipients, living donors, family members and supporters from across the U.S. come together for the biennial Transplant Games to compete and to bring attention to organ donation and transplantation, according to organizers.
Martin was a competitive athlete until he suffered a massive heart attack in 2003 that caused progressive heart damage, according to the news release. Doctors thought he might survive 10 years, but he bested those odds — receiving a heart transplant June 21, 2022, at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.
He now helps others by volunteering as a transplant mentor at the medical center, and facilitates heart transplant support groups in Seattle and Burlington.
What Martin gained went beyond winning, as he realized during the opening ceremony and the successful effort at a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of transplant recipients and living donors.
“It hit me that we were all standing there because we’d each been given a second chance,” he said. “Looking around that huge room was overwhelming because everyone there had gone through some version of what I went through and understood what it took to get there.”
