#Rio2016

The 2016 Paralympic Games will be taking place September 7 to 18, and Mireille Landry, a physical therapy lecturer and exercise coordinator for the Women’s Cardiovascular Health Initiative at Women’s College Hospital, will be in Rio de Janeiro with the Canadian athletes. The Faculty of Medicine’s Alyson Musial talked to Landry about her role.

Tell us about your role on the Health Sciences Team for Team Canada. How will you be helping our Canadian Paralympic athletes?

I will be assigned specific teams or athletes that are part of the Canadian Paralympic Team, and accompany these athletes/teams to their training sessions and events. I’ll be on hand for any sporting event preparation, as well as emergency first aid. My “office” is the change room, the playing field, and the Team Canada clinic in our residence at the athlete’s village.

My role will involve providing treatment and rehabilitation of injuries, as well as support for performance through injury prevention, maintenance and recovery interventions. I mainly use manual and exercise therapy, soft tissue and taping techniques. Athletes are very in touch with their needs and often require less aggressive treatments than what you might provide in a clinic. They are fine-tuned, high-performance individuals, and gentle approaches are generally more successful. A high-stakes competition isn’t where you “show off” your skills in a new treatment or interfere with the athlete’s preparation!

What is the greatest challenge you face as a member of this team?

A typical day working a multisport event can be long and not very glamorous. I can expect to work from early in the morning to late at night depending on training and event schedules. In an environment where you are consulting and treating athletes in change rooms, on sidelines or the field, you never really know what to expect!

Parasport can be played by athletes with a visual impairment, a spinal cord injury, amputations, cerebral palsy, an intellectual difference, spinal bifida, multiple sclerosis and other different abilities. Treating musculoskeletal injuries in this context can be more complex than in other athletes. I have to take into consideration how their physical difference aids their function and performance, and interacts with equipment they may need. As an example, an athlete may use increased muscle tension to their advantage, so trying to “relax” the muscles would interfere with their performance. I also miss my kids being away for two weeks!

What is the most rewarding aspect of being on the Health Sciences Team?

I love being a “small cog on the big wheel” and helping the Paralympic Games, as well as our Canadian athletes, to thrive. It feels great contributing my knowledge, experience and skills; I call the Games my “happy place”. I also get to connect with other therapists, sports medicine physicians, athletes and the whole team, which is a fantastic learning experience. I’m very much looking forward to the comradery, and expect we’ll have a few adventures along the way.

#Rio2016: Investing in the best can bring out the best in all of us

lavende4 — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:58:49 +0000

#Rio2016: Investing in the best can bring out the best in all of us

lavende4 Mon, 08/22/2016 - 13:58

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The Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre represents the largest investment in amateur sport development in Canada and is the home of three Olympians (Ken Jones photo)

Bruce Kidd

Author legacy

Bruce Kidd

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Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre

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“When we fail to invest in public facilities, we shortchange those who cannot afford to pay out of their own pocket”: Bruce Kidd

The breakout performance of 16-year-old Penny Oleksiak and the success of our women’s swim team made Canadians proud during these Olympic Games.

For all Canadians – and especially those living in Ontario and in Toronto – there is a special element to Oleksiak’s stellar performance in which we should take particular pride. She achieved it while training in a state-of-the-art public facility that is open to people of all ages and abilities, not just elite athletes, and serves as a site for research and education.

Four years ago when we broke ground on the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre at the ��Ƶ’s Scarborough campus there were many skeptics. The $205-million price tag of the project raised eyebrows among those inclined to cut costs. But with the support of the city, province and federal government and $30 million from our own students at U of T Scarborough, we built a facility that is the envy of many.

The Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre is co-owned by the City of Toronto and the ��Ƶ, with the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario as the major tenant, and represents the single largest investment ever made in amateur sport development in Canada. Now it also is the home of three Olympic medalists – Oleksiak, U of T Varsity Blues swimmer Kylie Masse and Winnipeg native Chantal Van Landeghem, as well as other Olympians and Paralympians competing in Rio.

U of T athletes make big impression at #Rio2016

lavende4 — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 16:20:07 +0000

U of T athletes make big impression at #Rio2016

lavende4 Mon, 08/22/2016 - 12:20

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Team Canada members participate in #Rio2016 Closing Ceremonies (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Subheadline

“It’s been thrilling to watch U of T students and alumni compete so brilliantly, courageously,” says Bruce Kidd

It was a wild ride in Rio at this year’s Summer Olympic Games.

Team Canada’s stellar performance earned us 22 medals – including four gold medals – showcasing the country’s more established athletes and rising stars like swimmer Penny Olesiak and sprinter Andre De Grasse.

��Ƶ’s league of Olympians made a big impression in Rio with 12 students and alumni competing for Canada.

Rosie MacLennan made a triumphant return to the Games, winning gold in trampoline. The Rio flag bearer is a U of T alumna and student of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE). She was also Canada’s only gold medalist at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Read Bruce Kidd’s discussion about investing in athletic excellence

U of T alumni and staff are also playing an important role in Rio as volunteers on Canada’s Health Services Team and on the tennis court.

Rio was also the stage for U of T experts weighing in on everything Olympics.

Greg Wells, assistant professor of kinesiology and physical education, gave insight into what makes track star Andre De Grasse so fast.

Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T, Richard Florida, argues that if we take into account additional factors like population and economy size, Canada’s Olympic ranking would be much lower.

Alternatively, professor of engineering Timothy Chan says if you look at Canada’s performance based on population per capita, we’re doing better than top ranked nations like China and the US.

While athletic achievement was the clear focus of the games, Rio can’t seem to escape controversy – from the mysteriously green diving pool to whether or not American swimmer Ryan Lochte and fellow Team USA athletes were robbed at gunpoint.

U of T Urban Studies assistant professor, teaching stream, David Roberts says the pushback from Brazilian authorities who claimed the Lochte incident was fabricated was likely an attempt to save the Games from a public relations nightmare.

“High profile street crime is never a good thing for a city trying to solidify itself as a global tourist destination,” he says.

Though international media has fixated on the hiccups surrounding the games, the social and political climate in Brazil is largely ignored, says Roberts.

“What I have not seen in the mainstream press is much focus on the tens of thousands of people who were displaced to build Olympic infrastructure or much about the social impacts of the new policing techniques that have been adopted for the games and their long term implications among the various other ways that hosting the Olympic Games is likely to exacerbate social injustices in Rio,” he says.

But long after the Olympic torch is extinguished, the people of Rio will endure the Games’ lasting legacy.

“Hosting the Olympics will leave Rio with some shiny new sports infrastructure and some new hotels, but also a lot of debt and some serious questions about whether the money may have been better spent on other things to improve the lives of average Brazilians,” says Roberts.

#Rio2016: U of T's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

lanthierj — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 17:11:03 +0000

#Rio2016: U of T's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

lanthierj Fri, 08/19/2016 - 13:11

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Donna Vakalis completed her masters in Architecture at U of T in 2009 and is now working on her PhD in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Topic

While working on her PhD in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, modern pentathlete Donna Vakalis fences four times a week and swims five times a week. She shoots four times a week and runs five times a week.

She even rides twice a month.

Now, all that training comes down to a gruelling two days' worth of events for the last of the ��Ƶ athletes to compete in Rio.

Vakalis, who competed in the 2015 world championships in Germany, placed fourth in the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. An alumna of U of T's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Vakalis began her PhD after competing in the 2012 Olympics in London.

Read about Vakalis in London

When she's not training, Vakalis studies the impact of indoor building environments on public health and productivity, under the supervision of civil engineering professors Heather MacLean and Jeffrey Siegel.

Read the Metro article about Vakalis

Before she left, she spoke with Matt Galloway of CBC Radio's Metro Morning.

"Most of us can barely focus on one thing, let alone be good at that one thing, let alone be good at five different things," Galloway told Vakalis. "What did it take for you to try to nail all of these different sports?"

"it is a little bit of a different mindset," Vakalis said, because the athlete's goal can't be to "be the very best you can be at that one sport" but "there is something appealing about trying to optimize multiple goals. So for anyone who has multiple passions, I think they can relate to this, when you want to be the best parent or the best friend, and also the best at work and also the best in your hobby – there's something really fun about optimizing them all."

Fencing is her toughest event, Vakalis said, adding that she learned it last and finds it a challenging combination of tactics and athleticism, particularly given the unpredictability of the opponent.

"People say it's a little like chess and track combined together."

Listen to the complete Metro Morning interview

You can watch Vakalis compete August 18 and 19 on CBC – and with so many faculty, staff, students and alumni cheering Vakalis on, civil engineering's Keenan Dixon is also live-tweeting her events.

“Donna is such an impressive student and athlete, the whole department is so proud of her,” says Civil Engineering Communications Coordinator Dixon. “We’ll all be watching, cheering and supporting her at every stage of the competition!”

See some of the social media highlights in the Storify below:

U of T's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

vzaretski — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 19:24:31 +0000

U of T's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

vzaretski Fri, 08/12/2016 - 15:24

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David Ramos via Getty Images

Veronica Zaretski

Author legacy

Veronica Zaretski

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U of T alumna and student of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) Rosie MacLennan is Canada’s gold medallist in trampoline. She won with a final score of 56.465.

"I had a bit of a shaky preliminary round so I was coming into the final trying to stay strong, trying to stay high," she told CBC after the medal ceremony. "When I was done I looked over at Dave [her coach] and he had a smile on his face and that was the first indication that I did all right."

MacLennan is Canada’s Olympic flag bearer at Rio, the first Canadian summer athlete to successfully defend an individual Olympic gold medal and a three-time Olympian. She earned Canada’s only gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and finished in seventh place at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Read the Toronto Star story on MacLennan's win

Read the Globe and Mail story

Read the CTV News story

Read the Global News story

Read the Sportsnet story

Follow MacLennan on Twitter: @RosieMacLennan

As the world’s best continue to compete in Rio, take a look at these other outstanding U of T athletes who are competing this weekend.

Earlier this week U of T’s Kylie Masse won a bronze in the women’s 100-metre backstroke race. Masse, a second-year student of KPE, was named U of T female athlete of the year, Ontario University Athletics (OUA) female athlete of the year and the BLG top female athlete in Canadian University Sport. She is also the first Varsity Blues swimmer to claim an Olympic medal while enrolled as a student at U of T. Follow Masse on Twitter: @Kjmasse

Read the National Post story on Masse's victory

Read the Toronto Star story

Read the CBC story

Read the Sportsnet story

Third-year psychology student Gabriella Stafford will compete tonight and over the weekend in the 1,500 metres event. The Varsity Blues track star is part of a family who bleeds blue.

Stafford’s father, U of T professor Jamie Stafford, represented Canada at four World Championships. Her mother, Maria Luisa Gardner (1965-2008), was from a running family with a brother, John Anthony Gardner, who was an OUAA champion for U of T and sister, Sara Gardner, who also represented Canada at a World Under-20 Championship for U of T. Gabriella's sister Lucia, who starts studying engineering at U of T in the fall, just became the 2016 junior national champion in the 1,500-metre event.

Read the U of T Magazine guide to all 12 of U of T’s Olympic athletes competing in Rio

U of T News will continue following the progress of U of T athletes and will share developing news about our athletes in the coming weeks.

U of T athletes have the advantage of training in top-notch facilities. At the downtown Toronto campus, athletes can train at the Athletic Centre, Varsity Centre, Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport and Hart House Fitness Centre.

At the ��Ƶ Mississauga, athletes can train in the comprehensive Recreation Athletics & Wellness Centre. UTM recently welcomed 520 athletes during the Ontario Summer Games (OSG), and hosted the OSG basketball and field lacrosse competitions on the UTM campus. Read more about the Ontario Summer Games at UTM.

And at ��Ƶ Scarborough, athletes can benefit from the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, a 365,000 square foot world-class facility, features a fitness centre, field house, climbing wall and an aquatic centre containing two Olympic sized swimming pools, a competition and training pool and a Dive Tank.

“When we designed the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, we worked closely with experts to create a complete environment that would give our elite national team athletes the best chances to compete international,” says Andrew Arifuzzaman, CAO at the ��Ƶ Scarborough. “From the two edgeless,10-lane Mertha stainless steel pools to the starting blocks at TPASC, the facilities mirrors what our athletes compete in internationally.”

“I watched this week as our men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams prepared to head to Rio for the Paralympics,” says Laura Boyko, director of the health & wellness centre. “It makes me proud to know that TPASC is for everyone; an inclusive facility to help all athletes reach their full potential. U of T has not only some of the greatest minds in the country, but also some of the most competitive athletes as well.”

U of T urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”

lavende4 — Sat, 30 Jul 2016 14:38:35 +0000

U of T urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”

lavende4 Sat, 07/30/2016 - 10:38

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Aerial view of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games' Beach Volleyball Arena at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, taken on July 26, 2016 (photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Research & Innovation

Opening ceremonies are set to begin a week from today but the road to the Rio Olympics has been nothing short of rocky.

The threat of the Zika virus – which has prompted some athletes to pull out of the Games – still looms. The sewage-filled venue for some water sports, Guanabara Bay, was never cleaned up as promised. And, as so often seems to be the case in the final days counting down to the Games, the Athletes Village is still a work-in-progress. Add to all of this the existing social inequality and political unrest in the country.

Will Rio be ready for the Olympics? U of T News asked David Roberts, assistant professor, teaching stream, in urban studies at the ��Ƶ. His research focuses on the impact of mega-events on a city and its urbanization.

In 2014, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member visiting the Olympics site in Rio said the preparations were the “worst ever.” Are they?
It’s hard to know what the worst-prepared city is because they said that as well for pretty much every mega-event, whether it’s the Olympics or the World Cup. I think it’s pretty obvious that there are some things that aren’t quite up to snuff in Rio – the Athletes Village seems to be only half-done just a few days before the Games and there’s sewage in the bay.

But I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared. And that’s part of the challenge of the whole thing.

Remarkably, cities and countries are able to rise to the occasion and what I think we’ll see is, as soon as the Games start, most of the media coverage will switch from lack of preparation or fear of disease or fear of violence and whatever else to the competition. These Games are really well orchestrated to capture that type of attention and draw attention away from all the other sorts of things that are happening.

I’m sure we’ll see some reports here and there about athletes getting sick or criticizing some aspect of the preparations like we saw in Sochi for example, but for the most part I think our coverage will be about the nationalistic celebration of sport.

There’s a heightened fear of terror attacks in the Western world – what are the security implications for the Rio Olympics?
It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening in Rio itself for various reasons. One, we don’t get as much news about Brazil and Rio as we do about other parts of the world – especially English-language news. Two, the political unrest makes it hard to get any official news that’s reliable.

Beyond that, it’s not the same space in which we’re seeing terrorism play out in Europe in particular and the Middle East.

Sure, the threat of violence is contemporarily something we have to deal with globally, but I’m not entirely sure what that means for Rio. If anything, Rio is prepared on the security front – they’ve spent tons of money on security. They showed in the World Cup two years ago that they have that capacity and mindset. Usually places that are hosting these events are in such a lockdown they are quite secure.

(Below: Brazilian Marine personnel patrol during training sessions for rowing teams at Lagoa Stadium venue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 29, 2016 / photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

Will the infrastructure spending leading up to the Olympics in Rio benefit the city in the future?
It’s hard to make the case that the long-term benefits will reap rewards that will pay them back for that amount of spending.

These spectacles have gotten to the point where they’re so expensive and so targeted at specific areas within the city – rather than the city as a whole – that the rewards are quite uneven and don’t match up, ever, to the spending that takes place and the host.

The owners of games (whether the IOC or FIFA) are quite adept at extracting their cut of the pie out of the whole system. Even if there is television revenue, a lot of that’s going back to these international organizations – and not into the communities there.

Some people will benefit a lot but it’ll likely be the “haves” of Rio society.

So why on earth do these cities do it?
That’s a great question. Part of it is the challenge to become recognized as a world class city. Whatever that might mean – keeping up with the Joneses or establishing oneself as a destination for tourists or business investment – is really a pressing concern of a lot of different cities.

We could ask that same question as to why Toronto would ever want to host the Olympics. What would be the benefit from all that expending? Maybe we can get some extra money for infrastructure. And it may be able to raise our profile – but to what end? I don’t think that’s ever really spelled out.

If you’re a politician wanting to put your stamp on a city, then that’s something you’re interested in, but in terms of social benefits, they never seem to play out.

It’s very much based on short-term thinking rather than any sort of long-term assessment of what might be good for Rio or any other city that’s hosting these things going forward. It’s especially a challenge when cities are faced with high levels of inequality and high levels of uneven development within a city.

It’s one thing for London to host an event because they have much of the infrastructure already there so they’re not spending as much initially to host an event, but even then it’s a risky gamble. it’s quite another when you’re dealing with a city that has some basic needs that should be taken care of and real stark inequality on the ground that this seems to only exacerbate.

(Below: the International Road Cycling competition in Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil served as a test for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games TASSO MARCELO/AFP/Getty Images)

Is it irresponsible for the IOC and other sporting organizations to grant these cities the ability to host these mega-events?
That is a really thorny question because for a long time the Olympics and the World Cup were all pretty much hosted in developed countries – in Europe and North America with a couple of exceptions. There was a strong critique by other parts of the world that say it really narrows who can take advantage of this opportunity. So there’s a huge critique about the fact that there was never a mega-event in Africa or the Middle East and it had been decades and decades since Central or South America hosted one.

The problem I think, ultimately, is that the formula didn’t change. The IOC and FIFA expect the same games no matter where it is in the world and don’t take into account the local context. Not only is the funding formula the same for a rich country and a developing country, so are the expectations of infrastructure and everything else.

A better question is – if we want these giant events to continue and we think it’s a good idea to have them in every corner of the globe, what can we do to make sure they don’t damage the local community, they don’t exacerbate inequality and they don’t negatively impact the ways of life of a lot of people?

There’s enough money there that FIFA and IOC don’t have to extract billions of dollars of profit if they host these games. If they had a more equitable structure, there might be a way of doing that.

How do you make those changes when these big sporting bodies aren’t willing to change their ways?
I think it’s through activism, I think it’s through political lobbying. I think it’s through pressuring some changes in law, since [IOC and FIFA] are both recognized as non-profits so they don’t pay any taxes. And I think it’s also in terms of activism from both athletes and consumers.

If we as consumers choose to not watch or choose to find other ways to influence the games – such as not supporting the sponsors – then change would probably happen a lot quicker.

But it’s rare to get a large enough group of people to boycott something – enough to make an impact.
That’s the effective power of these types of events – they tap into all kinds of things. They tap into our love of competition, our benevolent nationalism, they tap into excitement – they give us a collective thing to celebrate. There are a lot of reasons why the stories about inequality, disease and pollution go out the window as soon as these events start. It’s because what the news media and what we’re going to be talking about by the proverbial water cooler are the sporting events themselves rather than the context which they’re being staged.

One of the things I’m interested in is how these events are as much played out on television as anywhere else – and how adept planning departments have gotten at staging television events rather than urban events.

You clean up the parts that are going to be on TV and you make really nice parts of the city. You have this really uneven development that’s designed to look good on television and when you get there you realize it’s no different than any other television set – it’s quite thin in terms of its relevance to everyday life.

#Rio2016

2016 Paralympics: U of T physical therapist looking forward to supporting role at #Rio2016

#Rio2016: Investing in the best can bring out the best in all of us

Read more about U of T at #Rio2016

U of T athletes make big impression at #Rio2016

Read more about Rosie here

Read more about Kylie here

Read Bruce Kidd’s discussion about investing in athletic excellence

#Rio2016: U of T's Donna Vakalis competes in modern pentathlon

Read about Vakalis in London

Read the Metro article about Vakalis

Listen to the complete Metro Morning interview

U of T's Rosie MacLennan wins gold at #Rio2016

Read more about MacLennan here

Read the Toronto Star story on MacLennan's win

Read the Globe and Mail story

Read the CTV News story

Read the Global News story

Read the Sportsnet story

Read more about Kylie Masse

Read the National Post story on Masse's victory

Read the Toronto Star story

Read the CBC story

Read the Sportsnet story

Read more about Stafford and her family’s legacy of athleticism at U of T

Read the U of T Magazine guide to all 12 of U of T’s Olympic athletes competing in Rio

U of T urban expert on Rio Olympics: “I don’t think any city is ever fully prepared”