Facilitating sport participation legacies from Olympic and Paralympic Games: the case of Whistler Adaptive Sports and Vancouver 2010

One of the ‘offers’ to host communities from the conduct of mega sport-events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games is that following the event there would be increased participation in sport and physical activity. For Paralympic events, under the auspices of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) there is the further hope that there will be a legacy of increased participation and social inclusion of people with disabilities as the result of hosting the event. Using a contextualist approach, this research explored the reliability of these claims by exploring the case of Whistler Adaptive Sports (WAS) in the lead up to and following the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (Vancouver 2010) that were held in the city of Vancouver and the Resort Municipality of Whistler in British Columbia, Canada. WAS has evolved to leverage off the Vancouver 2010 infrastructure and social development