DENVER — Howie Sanborn’s the kind of guy who jumps out of an airplane, parachutes into a target the size of a bouncy castle, and drives straight from there to a Wisconsin tattoo parlor.

“Sky God,” his Army Golden Knights teammates called his tattoo, and they’d rub his left shin for good luck.

He’s the kind of guy who politely smiles when athletes refer to sports as “war” and “battle” after he served a pair of 12-month deployments in Iraq. He’s 39, an optimistic kind of guy. Takes the bad, recalls the good, and values the latter. To him, it was a bummer he “accidentally landed in Lake Michigan” on a jump during the famed Chicago Air and Water Show, but he also got to skydive into Wrigley Field during a Cubs game. For Howie that’s a straight-up win, not a wash.

“I got to put on that uniform and be the face of our country,” says Sanborn, who lived in Denver after his Army retirement. “How cool is that?”

Howie’s this kind of guy: In June 2012 he was cycling and got hit by a car. Busted his shoulder pretty bad, got back on his bike. That same year, three months later, he’s cycling outside Kirksville, Mo., and gets hit by another car. Doesn’t remember much. But he already knew.

Spinal cord injury. Paralyzed from the waist down. His skydiving days were over. Crushed.

How does a man respond to a distracted driver turning his dream life into a living nightmare?

Howie grabbed an iPad. Researched handcycles. “Dude, I love riding my bike. I’m not going to stop riding my bike,” he said. Seven months later he competed in his first paratriathlon.

“Let’s live this wheelchair life,” he said.

Eight years later and he’s about to learn if he’s going to the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

Howie Sanborn’s the kind of guy you celebrate on the Fourth of July. Military vet, American go-getter, general badass. I’m grateful this kind of guy defended our country for 15 years. Thankful this kind of guy endured 63 days without sleep in Ranger training.

Howie learns Tuesday if he’s on the paratriathlon team that represents the United States at the 2020 Paralympic Games. And if it turns out he’s not bound for Tokyo, he’ll train harder and take aim at Paris in 2024.

That kind of guy.

“Coming back (from the spinal cord injury) was a combination of being raised in the military, friends and family, just this inner voice telling me, ‘Do it,'” Sanborn says. “As soon as I woke up (after the crash) I knew the damage to my body was done. So at that point you’ve got two options: Sit there and dwell on it, or you can move forward. I knew that if I don’t get going right now, I might not get going. I got going.”

Strong advice.

But I had questions.

Boy, did I have questions.

Starting with this: How do you view the man who put you in this position?

“There was times I was angry. But I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by hate for that person. It’s not going to change the situation and it’s definitely not going to make me a better person,” Sanborn says. “What’s done is done. I don’t want to meet that guy. That’s true. But at the same time I don’t want to waste time thinking about him.”

And this: Why paratriathlon?

“I guess I just kind of key off of my background,” he says. “I was a Ranger, and our creed (is), ‘We move further faster and fight harder than any other soldier.’ We hold ourselves to a much higher standard. Sixty-three days, no food, no sleep. I think I can handle this 1-hour, 10-minute race.”

I met Howie for the first time at the Warrior Games in 2014. During that competition he gazed over the spectacular, daunting mountains that shadow the Air Force Academy and said, “Yep, I’m moving here. Yep. How cool would it be to live at the Olympic Training Center?” Now he lives at the Olympic Training Center.

He made over 2,500 jumps as a parachutist. Some were in a war, some were on “Monday Night Football,” like the Patriots-Dolphins game where the lifelong Pats fan saw Julian Edelman go 99 yards for a touchdown. More than one was in the dark into a real battlefield, one was in the filming of “Transformers 2” when his Army Golden Knights made a cameo at the request of director Michael Bay, dodging buildings, humans and camels into a 10×10-meters landing target.

“Megan Fox, Michael Bay, we met them all,” he says.

The American flag flies on the Fourth of July.

The American flag is expected to be a target of protest at the 2020 Games in Tokyo. It already has been in qualifying, with hammer thrower Gwen Berry turning her back on the flag.

“I’m not offended by it,” the Army veteran says.

Howie then deadpanned: “I don’t stand for the national anthem.”

Please, go on.

“When I hear (the national anthem) I am reminded of the years I spent in Iraq, try to think about defending our freedom and just the fact we have so many more freedoms than a lot of people. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to take that for granted. But you can forget how much freedom we have compared to other people,” he says. “I get it. It’s a hard subject. You want to believe that everyone thinks that our country is the greatest country in the world. But if you’re in a position where you think it’s not, you should be able to stand up and point that out.

“I’m not always right. I see the world through the lens I was given. I try to see things from a positive side. I definitely am one of those people who has deployed and worn the uniform. I’ve lost friends. I’ve had friends injured. When someone has the idea that they don’t have a freedom of speech, that bothers me more than someone who turns their back on the flag.”

Happy Independence Day, Howie Sanborn.

God bless America.