Legard was born in 1906 in Saltash in Cornwall but spent most of his childhood in Sweden, where he developed his un-English expertise in skiing and other Nordic sports.
On passing out, he joined the elite cavalry regiment which, after a couple of variants of name-style, became known as the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.
These three men were considered sufficiently credible competitors to represent Britain in the 1931 World Championships in Oberhof in Thüringen in Germany.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Legard's regiment had only just pensioned-off its horses in favour of Mark VI light tanks.
Meanwhile, the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill was keen to keep the land forces busy and pre-empt a spirit of defeatism from taking hold in the British Army.
His answer was a force of Commandos, volunteers to cross the Channel and harass the enemy garrisons the length of the coastline of occupied Europe.
Legard became a member of this force and the Commandos soon developed an esprit de corps and a methodology and expertise in amphibious warfare.
At 34 years of age, he was much older than most of the Commandos, but as an experienced officer, his value lay more as a unit commander than as a leader of the individual assault teams.
The Badminton Horse Trials were inaugurated in May 1949 by the Duke of Beaufort to assist train British equestrians for international competition.