We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.
Derrick Penner in today’s Vancouver Sun profiles North Van’s Rob Mulder – one of the people who combines his sport technology know-how along with his passion for the paralympian athletes into building their equipment:
Athletes arrive at Mulder’s shop with varying degrees of backing from sponsors or other funders, such as WorkSafeBC or the Insurance Corp. of B.C.
Sometimes Mulder can charge his normal rates; other times he finds himself donating what amounts to thousands of dollars worth of his time.
“How do you not help these guys when they have such great goals?” he asked.
“I know I’m giving a lot of myself into this, and it’s not good business,” he said. “But I’m not a good businessman.”
And it isn’t a full-time business for Mulder, a composites fabricator who got his start making high-tech windsurf boards, and got into supplying disabled athletes by chance when wheelchair marathoner Kelly Smith came to him for a wheel repair.
Read the full story here.