Cundy goes for patriotic look on new racing leg for London

Jody Cundy has unveiled the leg on which he hopes to add to his two Paralympic gold medals in London.

Cundy, who will represent ParalympicsGB in the C4-5 kilo and C4 individual pursuit at the Games, helped design the leg with Icelandic company Össur. They list athlete Oscar Pistorious among their clients.

The prosthetic right-leg took a year to design, and will replace Cundy's rainbow-jersey inspired limb for London.

"I've painted my legs before, it's pretty easy to do. For the world championships one I've got all I had to do was paint them one colour and then stick on some electrical tape for the rainbow bands. But this time I wanted a professional design," he told Cycling Weekly last week.

"I sat down with Gary Forshaw from Össur a year ago to run down a list of what I wanted, which involved taking the good points from the leg I used in Beijing and any refinements I wanted.

"Several prototypes were made, which were useful for seeing what gives the best fit. Once we settled for the model I started using it in training as the alignments can take some time. I tried some head-to-head tests to check that we had gone in the right direction, which I think we have."

With the leg proving to be a perfect fit, Cundy and Forshaw then went about the paintjob for the new model.

"Gary and I both drew sketches for the colour scheme, which were pretty close to each other's. We liked the idea of going for the blue union flag, just as it is on the Paralympics GB kit."

Also included is a lengthy list of names of those people who have helped Cundy in his career, alongside a medal table listing his 10 World and Paralympic titles.

"The names came from something I saw on a Black Cab in London, which I thought it was a cool idea. And the medal table gave us a chance to use some red, which is missing from the union flag colour scheme we went for.

"I've worn the leg and the GB kit in training and it's spot on," he added.

His new leg lists the names of those who have helped him during his career

Cundy and the British Para-cyclists arrived in London over the weekend, and will train at the Olympic Velodrome until Wednesday.

Competition for the 33-year-old begins on Friday afternoon with the C4-5 kilo finals.

"The kilo comes after the pursuit, which is quite unusual. In the last two world championships it's been the other way around. So I'll try and unleash hell in the first event and then hope my coaches don't step in the wrong direction when giving me time checks during the pursuit!"

"We've been in the Velodrome before, but back then it was just another track. When you see it with all the 2012 branding all of a sudden is becomes the dream venue," Cundy added.

Cundy and one of his previous rainbow jersey-inspired racing legs

Related links

London 2012 Paralympics: Event schedule