Percy Legard
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Personal information | |
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Full name | Charles Percy Digby Legard |
Born | Winter pentathlon | 17 June 1906
Percy Legard (17 June 1906 – 16 February 1980) was a British Army officer and sportsman. Legard competed as an
Early life
Legard was born in 1906 in Saltash in Cornwall but spent most of his childhood in Sweden, where he developed his un-English expertise in skiing and other Nordic sports. He came from a junior branch of the long-established family of Yorkshire gentry. The family had been loyal servants of the Crown since the Civil War and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all officers, either of the British Army - and Britain's Indian Army - or, since the family lived close to Scarborough, the Royal Navy. Legard's father was a naval officer.
He returned to
Athletic career
Legard became the British
Olympics
Following the 1931 winter championships, Legard had added five new events as he was training for modern pentathlon in the Summer Olympics. In the Summer Olympics, he competed in the modern pentathlon at both the 1932 and in 1936 Summer Olympics. In the Los Angeles meeting, Legard came 8th overall and won the 4 kilometre cross-country element. In the Berlin meeting Legard came 19th and was 4th in the cross-country.[1]
At this time, the Summer and Winter Olympiads were still held in the same year and as well as the 1936 Summer Olympics, Legard competed in the Winter games of that year. His event was the Nordic combined, which married a 15 kilometre cross-country ski-race with 2 attempts at the ski-jump. 46 competitors completed the events, including Legard who came 44th. To date, Legard is the only Briton ever to have competed in this event at the Olympics. Legard's Olympic career was interrupted by the war years, which eliminated the Olympiads of 1940 and 1944. Nevertheless, he was to make one more Olympic appearance after the War, in 1948, some sixteen years after his first Olympic appearance.
Commando
Legard was a serving officer in the British Army and the sports in which he chose to participate were all considered appropriate for the development of athleticism. When the
Back in Britain, the armoured units awaited be re-equipped with more modern and powerful weapons. Meanwhile, the new
Post-War
In the 1948 Winter Olympics at
References
- ^ "Percy Legard Olympic Results". sports-reference.com. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
External links
- Percy Legard at Olympics.com
- Percy Legard at Olympedia
- Percy Legard at Team GB