February 23, 2023

Reflections of sports science support of the Para athlete across 25 years

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Vancouver Campus | 12:30pm–1:30pm

UBC Vancouver’s School of Kinesiology, UBC Okanagan’s School of Health and Exercise Sciences hosts a monthly UBC Exercise, Kinesiology, and Health Seminar Program. 

This month's talk features Professor Vicky Tolfrey, Director of the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport at Loughborough University (UK). This event is open to all and no registration required.

Reflections of sports science support of the Para athlete across 25 years

There has been a rapid public interest in Para sport since London 2012 Paralympic Games which has been matched by a continued advancement in the standard of elite competition. High-performance athletes are high-performance whether they have a disability or not. However, Para sport adds a touch of complexity to the delivery of some practitioner’s science and medicine delivery methods and the knowledge gleaned from the literature may not be directly applicable to the wheelchair athlete. Clearly there are two major components of wheelchair sports performance, these being the athlete and the chair. Therefore, the athlete and sports wheelchair must be considered as one integrated unit or performance will be affected; and for this an understanding of the physiological consequences of the physical impairment is a necessity.

This lecture will reflect on Dr. Tolfrey's professional activities since attending the Atlanta Paralympic Games in 1996 as a PhD student and sport science support officer to Wheelchair Racing. It will highlight the development of her research portfolio from working within the sports of wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair rugby and the sport of handcycling. 

In Dr. Tolfrey's capacity as the Director of the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport at Loughborough University, projects leading into Tokyo 2020(21) and future lines of enquiry will be outlined. She will illustrate the very broad areas where the evidence-based practice is being used and developed, particularly using experiences from the ‘real world’ of preparing athletes for the Paralympic Games, where ParalympicsGB has notably been very successful. 

Professor Tolfrey is Director of the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport (PHC) at Loughborough University in the UK and a Professor of Applied Disability Sport whose research focusses on the ergonomics of wheeled mobility (physical activity to high performance sport), with expertise in Para sport physiology.

Location: Life Sciences Centre (LSC), Room 1001, 2350 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3

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