A BOURNEMOUTH University lecturer is helping a disabled cyclist achieve his dream of representing Britain at the Rio 2016 Paralympics.

Dr Bryce Dyer is designing a prosthetic leg for amputee Craig Preece, who is in with a chance of making the Team GB cycling squad for next year’s summer Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The father-of-two was injured by a roadside bomb while serving as a soldier with the Royal Engineers in Afghanistan in 2010.

Currently a member of the podium squad, he is now pushing himself to be ready for Rio, where he hopes to compete in both road and track events.

As a below-the-leg amputee, he relies on a prosthetic leg to enable him to compete at the highest levels.

Dr Dyer is working with both Preece and prosthetists at Pace Rehabilitation in designing the limb that he will use to train and, hopefully, compete with next year in Brazil.

The leg itself is being created following testing that determined the most effective geometry to provide maximum power transfer.

The result of these tests led to Dr Dyer generating several prototype designs that will now all be fabricated and evaluated aerodynamically in the field.

Dr Dyer said: “A project like this is tricky as you’re taking something that has to replace a limb that has been lost. It must be comfortable to use during extremely high levels of effort but has to perform well technically too.

He added: "It’s a great case study of our product design philosophy at BU – the balance of form and function, the technological and the humanistic”.

The senior lecturer in product design has a history of helping disabled athletes. He helped Irish athlete Colin Lynch on his way to a world title in the 2012 London Paralympic Games and was nominated for a Times Higher Education award in 2012 for his work.

Speaking about his latest project he said: “I realised we could develop something special but we’d need to do some further experimentation to find out how to push its performance on from what we did in the last project.

“We’re in the middle of that process now – the athlete has a chance of getting into the Team GB squad so it is exciting for all of us involved”.