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Steven Noble
Editor, Internal Publications
p. 403.440.5692
e-mail: snoble@mtroyal.ca

Fred Cheney
Media Relations Officer
p. 403.440.5195
e-mail: fcheney@mtroyal.ca

 

Physical Education and Recreation professor and Paralympics expert, David Legg has joined a group of distinguished Canadian scholars invited to post Olympics-related podcasts this February.

Legg, associate professor in the Bachelor of Applied Business and Entrepreneurship — Sport and Recreation program, drew on his Paralympics experience for his podcast, Issues in the Paralympic Games and Movement: What They’ve Been and Where They're Taking Us.

Legg is Vice-President of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, which is a parallel Olympics for the disabled and takes place two weeks after the end of both summer and winter Olympic Games.

The podcasts, called Intellectual Muscle: University Dialogues for Vancouver 2010, are sponsored by the Globe and Mail and the University of British Columbia.

The Paralympics run each Olympic season following the Olympics in the same host city and venues for athletes with spinal chord injuries.

Legg’s involvement with wheelchair sports stemmed partly from his father’s disabilities and also because of his own love of sports.

His background speaks for itself.

He worked for Ontario and Canadian wheelchair sports, then, as he finished his PhD at the University of Alberta, he acted as advisor to the President of the International Paralympics Committee.

He attended the Paralympics in 1996 in Atlanta, in 2002 in Salt Lake City and in 2004 in Athens, acting in a variety of administrative capacities.

For the Vancouver 2010 Paralympics, Legg will be providing guidance to the organizing and education committees.

Intellectual Muscle had wanted Legg to be part of the program months ago, but he was ineligible as Mount Royal was not yet a university. However, once university status was granted, Muscle immediately contacted Legg, eager for his expertise.

Of course, Legg was ecstatic about another opportunity to get involved in paralympic sport.

“It’s quite an honour,” says Legg. “Some of the people I’ve looked up to are the other speakers.”

Legg says his first experience with podcasting was rewarding. “The staff at (Mount Royal’s) Media Services were unbelievable,” he says, sure to give credit where credit is due.

“They did it in one take and took care of uploading the podcast.”

Legg focused his 25-minute podcast on the history of the Paralympic games. “One of the challenges of the games is understanding what they’re all about,” he says.

Legg’s informative podcast outlines the Paralympics’ beginnings after World War II, when the British government recognized that veterans with spinal cord and other injuries needed better rehabilitation.

Bissett Associate Professor David Legg will be podcasting from the 2010 Paralympics in Vancouver. this February.

History of the Paralympics

Sport was introduced as remedial exercise for vets at a rehabilitation hospital in Stoke Mandeville, England in 1944 and in 1948, the Stoke Mandeville Games began on the same day as the Olympics opened in London, with archery among the first sports.

The Stoke Games for spinal paralysis continued yearly and in 1952 went international, with competitions in snooker, darts, archery and table tennis.

The International Olympics Committee leadership agreed to hold Paralympics after the 1960 summer games in Rome, when wheelchair events were held for 400 athletes from 20 countries and became the founding Paralympic games. Since then, the Paralympics have been held every four years, parallel to both winter and summer games.

The summer Paralympics grew from 400 athletes in 1960 to almost 4,000 athletes from more than 145 countries in the Beijing games in 2008.

The Toronto Games in 1976 included athletes with visual impairments and amputation for the first time, an inclusion Legg says had an enormous impact on disability sports internationally.

The first Winter Olympic Games for the disabled were held in 1976 in Sweden, while in 1980 athletes with cerebral palsy were included.

In the 1984 Olympic summer games in Los Angeles and the winter games in Sarajevo, athletes with disabilities were invited to compete in demonstration events, a milestone for Paralympics. These events lasted 20 years to the 2004 games.

Legg says he’s honoured to have been invited to post a podcast to Intellectual Muscle.

“There’s a sense of personal satisfaction to have been invited to participate and in seeing your name and the Mount Royal logo listed with other universities,” says Legg.

“I’m glad to be able to share one of my passions with other people, and I’m very happy to know that the Paralympics side is being included.”

Legg will be attending the Paralympics in Vancouver in 2010, where he’ll speak at a conference in his role as Vice-President of the Canadian Paralympic Committee.

Other topics covered by Canadian scholars in the Intellectual Muscle series include The Olympic Games as a Global “Shared Ethics” Forum, The Politics of the Olympics and The Ethics of Neuroscience in Sport.

— Rhonda Greenaway, Nov. 23, 2009