VANCOUVER - Man in Motion Rick Hansen will welcome athletes when they arrive in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games next February.
Hansen is one of eight honorary mayors of the athletes villages named by Vancouver Games organizers to greet the world's Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
The world-renowned wheelchair athlete, who raised $26 million during his Man in Motion tour around the world, won six Paralympic medals in 1980 and 1984.
Hansen will be joined by Olympic silver medallist in rowing Tricia Smith as the voluntary village mayor for Vancouver, while former freestyle aerial skier Anna Fraser Sproule and Alan Kristmanson, a former member of the national men's basketball team who competed at the 1988 Games in Seoul, will handle duties in Whistler.
Dr. Douglas Clement, a UBC sports medicine professor and member of the Order of Canada, and his wife Diane Clement, who competed for Canada as a sprinter at the 1956 Melbourne Games, will act as voluntary mayors in Vancouver for the Paralympic Games, while four-time Paralympian Marni Abbott-Peter and three-time Paralympian Patrick Anderson will greet athletes in Whistler.
Hansen says that as a competitor in past Games, he knows how important it is for competitors to have a welcoming place to stay.
