The 27^th WUGS will take place in Kazan from 6-17 July  attracting 13,500 student athletes, coaches, officials and medical support staff from 172 countries across the globe.

The Games are the third largest multi-sport event behind both the Asian and Olympic Games with a budget set to exceed the London 2012 spend.

A digital image of the Rubin Stadium currently under construction. It will have capacity for 45,000 spectators and will be the third largest stadium in Russia

The WUGS are a well-trodden pathway to elite performance, including athletes from the University of Bath such as 2012 British Olympic silver medallists Michael Jamieson and Gemma Gibbons.

Selection for the British team continues until May and is likely to total around 250 athletes, Britain’s largest ever delegation.

Chef de Mission is a term used to refer to the Head of Delegation of a national team at major sporting events

Andy will be responsible for ensuring that the best performance environment is created for all members of the British team including athletes, officials and support staff  and will support them throughout the event to ensure that their experience is the best possible. 

He said: “I am delighted and honoured to be appointed Chef de Mission for the World University Games in Kazan.  Having been involved in elite student sport for over a decade, their importance cannot be underestimated in the performance pathway of our elite student athletes. 

“I am looking forward to working with a great team to ensure we provide a performance focused environment that enables all team members to achieve their personal best.”

John Cavanagh is a four-times Paralympian and won Gold in Athens in 2004 and Silver in Beijing four years later. He competes in the Compound W1 category and will be part of the 13-strong GB team going for gold at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich from Thursday 30 August.

John takes silver at Beijing 2008 in the Men’s Individual Compound W1 (l-r) John Cavanagh GB (Silver); David Drahoninsky, Czech Republic (Gold); and Jeff Fabry USA (Bronze)

Amy and her family have all managed to get tickets to watch John compete, so he will be cheered on by his mum and four sisters, as well as his nephew and nieces.

For Amy it will be the first time she has been able to see him compete and she’s been warned by her sisters that it’s a nerve-wracking business.

She said: “Apparently the tension is un-believable, even though John appears cool as a cucumber. My three sisters travelled to Beijing in 2008 to see John compete and were amazed at how tense the whole thing was!”

Speaking about competing for his country, John said: “I am delighted to be taking part in the London 2012 Paralympic Games – it’s my home city, and I will have family and friends there to support me, which makes it even more special.

“This will be my fourth Games, and being part of the team in Sydney, Athens and Beijing has been very special. But that it’s in London this year makes it even more special for me.”

The University hosted the Paralympic GB team in its preparation for London 2012 and Amy was able to see John when he arrived at the Sports Training Village for final preparations in August.

John took part in a simulation training camp held at the Sports Training Village last September 2011 and was impressed by the University’s facilities and atmosphere.

“It’s great to think that the University will be playing such an important role in preparing the Paralympic GB team for London 2012,” said Amy. “I’m just so excited to think we’ll all be seeing John in London – a real family reunion – and fingers crossed he’ll be bringing home another medal.”

She will be interpreting for Chinese athletes and officials at press conferences and other events during the Games.

Jane said: “I’m very honoured to have been asked to interpret at the Games. Not many people have been selected to be official interpreters so it feels good.”

Jane has worked as a professional conference interpreter since 1996. She works, on a freelance basis, at the European Commission and the United Nations, including interpreting for José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, for the state visit of Premier Wun Jiabao of China, and other high level meetings between the EU and China.

In her home country of China, Jane worked as an interpreter for the Ministry of Justice.

“It will certainly be nerve-wracking. It’s not just coping with the language but also the knowledge needed for each sport. I’ve been given thick books which contain all the terminology you might need. It would be impossible to remember it all, so it’s a real test of my general knowledge. Hopefully I will deal with it quickly and professionally.

“It will be exciting to be at the Games and to see the athletes in action.”

Jane joined the University in 1998 to run the Chinese stream of our one-year MA in Interpreting & Translating in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies. It’s a highly vocational programme with a worldwide reputation for training professional translators and conference interpreters. Graduates of the course are working all over China and around the globe.

Dr Miller was the Chief Medical Officer for ParalympicsGB during the preparation for the 2008 Paralympics and for the past four years has been the national lead for Paralympic Sport within the English Institute of Sport.

He has now taken on the additional role of Head Sports Doctor for the London 2012 organising committee LOCOG for both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games.

Dr Miller will be working full time in the role from July to September 2012.

He said: “When I started the Bath sports medicine course many years ago I had an ambition to be involved in the Olympics and Partalympic Games and had the honour to lead the sports medicine support team for ParalympicsGB in Beijing.

“It is facinating to be on the other side as a provider of the games time medical services and an enormous logistical challenge to ensure that the venues are covered by suitably trained sports doctors, a good many of who will have been trained on the Univesity of Bath Sport & Exercise course. To have been asked to do this role is a real honour and a fascinating challenge that I am very much looking forward to.”

Dr Miller has a long history of association with the University’s Sport & Exercise Medicine MSc programme and was one of the first students to graduate from the course. In 2008 he became the first formally recognised specialist in Sport & Exercise Medicine in the UK.

Dr Michael Silk is a Reader who has specialised in critical social science in relation to sport since the early 1990s. He draws on expertise from research on past Games and major sporting events around the world to analyse the way that Britain presents itself during the Games, and the global response to this image.

He is director of Bath’s Sport, Physical Activity & Culture research group, based in the Department of Education.

This summer he will be looking at the official narratives of the nation, presented through the Games, particularly in relation to which specific images of Britain are chosen and why, how inclusive they are, how history is used, and which people become connected to such images.

A unique component of the research is that social media will be used to discuss interpretations with the general public.

“The easiest way to conceptualise this research,” said Dr Silk, “is to juxtapose the Olympic image of London and Britain with the images of Britain that flowed around the world last summer of riots and disaffected youth.”

“You have to ask questions over who is actually connected to the Games and who is not. Who fits with the narrative of ‘’Great Britain’ rolled out through the performance segments of the opening ceremony and who is disconnected, by class, gender, race, religion, ethnicity etc. Who are the real ‘winners’ in terms of urban regeneration and financial success?”

Dr Silk sees the research as having a potential impact on LOCOG for its report to Rio in 2016; Visit Britain, with regards to its role in influencing the image of Britain; the BBC, with regards to its coverage of major events in Britain, and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, affecting how Britain will be presented in major future events such as the Rugby World Cup, Athletic World Championships and bids for other events.

Stan has been working at Bath since 2010, providing sports massage and soft tissue therapy for performance athletes training at Bath and also for members of the public.

He currently works with the Team GB beach volleyball athletes, rhythmic gymnasts, badminton players and bobsleigh competitors based at Bath.

He has also been working with athletes from all sports during the ParalympicsGB training camps held at the University’s Sports Training Village.

For London 2012, he will be working as a volunteer providing soft tissue therapy support for beach volleyball players at Horse Guards Parade and at Earl’s Court for indoor volleyball players that don’t have their own medical staff travelling with them.

As well as sports massage, Stan uses stretching and taping techniques to support recovery and prevent existing injuries from getting worse during competition.

Stan previously supported the beach volleyball teams at the Olympics 2004 in Athens, where he helped organise the massage team for both the Olympic and the Paralympic Games.

He said: “I’m an Olympics junkie – I’m really excited to be a part of London 2012 – it’s one of the reasons why I got into this career.

Stan Mavridis has worked with Team Bath athletes since 2010

“Team Bath provides me with the fantastic opportunity to do the job I love. It’s really interesting to meet and work with top athletes from lots of different countries.

“I hope to be able to do it all again in Rio in four years time.”

Stan has over 17 years experience treating athletes of every standard. He studied his undergraduate degree in kinesiology at the University of Colorado and has further qualifications in Advanced Sports Massage, CORE Myofascial Therapy/Structural Integration, Active Isolated Stretching (AIS) and Kinesio Taping.

Two other Team Bath Physiotherapists, Katy Williams and Jane Howton, will also be working at the London 2012 Games. Katy will be working with the beach and indoor volleyball teams, and Jane will be based in the Olympic Village supporting athletes from all sports.

Dr Michael Proulx, who will start his role as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology in September, was chosen as a torchbearer for his research into blindness and his ongoing engagement with the blind community.

Dr Proulx is currently a lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at Queen Mary, University of London’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

He will join some 580 nominees between 28-29 August in carrying the flame from Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, to London for the Paralympic opening ceremony.

Dr Proulx said: “It is an incredible honour, but also very humbling, to be nominated and chosen to be a torch bearer for the Paralympic Games. I am part of an excellent network of researchers working on the cognitive psychology of blindness and devices built to help blind people ’see’ by turning images into sound.

“I am also thrilled to be joining the University of Bath. The Department of Psychology at Bath has a top-notch group of scientists with an excellent reputation for research that is both theoretically driven and has a positive impact on society.”

Dr Proulx’s current research focuses on the use of The vOICe, a ’sensory-substitution’ device used to convert visual information to sound. He has worked with blind individuals to better understand the role of visual experience for awareness and perception.

His work shows how the ‘visual’ parts of the brain process information, even when nothing ‘visual’ can be seen.  

The nomination noted that as a postdoctoral research fellow, Dr Proulx first engaged with blind persons through his research and his involvement with the blind community has expanded further throughout his career. He has devoted himself to promoting the careers of blind researchers, through advisement and collaboration, and in doing so is credited with bringing to attention the work of visually impaired scientists, when such achievements are often overlooked.

In addition to his part in the relay, Dr Proulx and his family will be in the audience for the Olympics Women’s Football and Paralympic Five-a-Side Football and Goalball – both of which involve visually impaired athletes.

“Qualifying for, and then competing in the Olympics is the pinnacle of an athlete’s career and the high stakes involved can lead to a tense and stressful environment for all concerned,” said Stephen

“There are glamorous sides to competing at this level, there is a great celebratory atmosphere at the Olympics, but what I recall most vividly from 1992 was the sheer intensity.”

As a professional badminton player Stephen won numerous Commonwealth, European and national titles between 1982 and 1990. To this day he remains England’s only Commonwealth Games men’s singles gold medallist.

When badminton made its Olympic debut in 1992, Stephen took on the role of British Badminton Team Manager, having only recently retired from competing himself.

“It was a fantastic honour to manage the team during its first Olympics competition. As I had only recently retired from competing I was in the position of having played against and alongside many of the team, and had travelled the world with several of them for many years. This made managing them an extremely challenging move for both them and me.

“I learnt a lot from the experience which has benefitted me in managing national teams since.”

Stephen says that changes to the game have introduced new challenges for the British Badminton Team in 2012. “A new scoring system,  has been introduced. Previously the winner was the best of three sets to 15, scoring only when you had the serve, but now the scoring is based on three sets to 21 with every rally scoring a point.

“This has made matches shorter but has the advantage of creating intensity from the very start of each game as it is very hard to recover if you fall several points behind. The downside is that the dramatic comebacks of the past no longer occur.”

The University will be hosting several teams for Pre Games Training Camps in the run up to 2012, and Stephen is looking forward to attending the games as a spectator.

“I have bought tickets to take my family to see the first weekend of the Paralympics. My children are very excited about that, especially as they see Paralympians training at the University. My son will be cheering for Ben Rushgrove – one of his favourite athletes. I will enjoy watching the Olympics on TV too and wish all those competing, especially our athletes from Bath, the very best of luck.”

The men's 4x100 metre relay team review their practice runs at the Aviva World Championships Preparation Camp in San Antonio in Summer 2009. Photo courtesy Aviva/Getty images

Dr Salo has worked with elite athletes for over 20 years, studying the fundamental principles underlying performance to improve their technique and efficiency, specialising in sprinting and hurdling.

He was the only biomechanical technical personnel in Team GB for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and this summer he will advise and support athletes in their preparations, right through to the Games.

“The Olympics is the pinnacle of an athlete’s career,” he said, “so anyone who works with athletes wants to get them to the best possible condition.”

Dr Salo combines his academic expertise with an inside understanding of athletics drawn from his experience of coaching international athletes in his home country of Finland.

His research focuses on mathematical modelling for sprint starts, investigations into sprinting on bends, for example in the 200 metres, and work with 4×100 metre relay teams on the efficiency of baton exchanges.

He films athletes on the track and analyses their movements through specialist software, eliminating the traditional reliance on practical trial and error to perfect performance.

Sometimes results can be surprising, in the case of sprinting on bends, analysis has directed coaches to use techniques that seem to be counter-intuitive but prove effective.

Dr Salo has worked with athletes who have achieved medal success, notably the winning 4×100 metre men’s relay team at the Athens Olympics 2004, including Bath’s Jason Gardener.

“When the team took the gold in Athens I had already flown home from the preparation camp, and I was screaming at the television from the sofa,” he said.

Dr Salo has high hopes for the British performance at London 2012. “London is going to be a huge sporting success for the British team,” he said. “Home nations always exceed predictions.”

At the Games Dr Salo will be in the Olympic Stadium filming races to review technique with coaches between heats.  “When you’re actually in the stadium and the race starts it’s nerve-wracking, but at the same time I can’t be nervous because I have to hold the camera steady to be able to analyse the race!”

To be part of the team that will help the host nation’s athletes go for glory is a high point in Dr Salo’s career. “London 2012 is going to be the closest I can get to a home Olympics, as Finland will never host the summer Games, so naturally I’m really excited,” he said. “The athletes are so motivated and there’s definitely an extra buzz. It’s great to be part of it.”