Cycling challenge helps fund new overseas fellowships for early-career cardiologists

Published: 20 March 2026

Two early-career cardiologists have been awarded a new Heart Foundation overseas fellowship, allowing them to train at world-leading hospitals and bring specialised skills and expertise back to New Zealand.

Left to right: Dr Fergus Stewart, Dr Gerry Devin and Dr Craig Riddell

The Malcolm Legget Overseas Training and Research Fellowship was established in honour of the late Associate Professor Malcolm Legget, a cardiologist and Heart Foundation Board member, to support advanced international training and research experience for early-career cardiologists.

Recipient Dr Fergus Stewart will begin his fellowship at St Thomas' Hospital in September 2026. His work will focus on improving care for people with heart disease. One project will develop a more personalised way to prescribe blood-thinning medicines after stent procedures, balancing the benefits of preventing clots with the risks of bleeding. A second project will explore how next-generation CT scanning can better plan complex stent procedures, helping doctors deliver safer, more precise treatment.

Recipients and their families with Carrie Hobson (Malcolm’s wife), Dr Gerry Devlin, Jane Sweeney (Malcolm’s sister), Clive Nelson and Professor Rob Doughty

Meanwhile, Dr Craig Riddell will travel to Toronto General Hospital in 2027 to study how cancer treatments affect the heart. While chemotherapy can weaken heart function, patients are often placed on heart-protective medications. However, it remains unclear whether those medicines are still needed once heart function recovers. Craig’s research will analyse clinical, genetic, blood test and imaging data to identify which patients may be able to safely stop medication in the future.

The fellowships were made possible due to an extraordinary fundraising effort by Professor Rob Doughty, Heart Foundation Chair of Heart Health at University of Auckland. In February 2025, he cycled 1,110km the length of the South Island in memory of his late friend and colleague, Malcolm Legget. Fellow cardiologist Associate Professor Nigel Lever joined him for part of the ride.

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Thanks to numerous generous donations he raised more than $70,000, funds which helped with the establishment of the new overseas fellowship. The fellowship has special significance as Malcolm Legget was a recipient of a Heart Foundation overseas fellowship in 1993, when he gained skills in echocardiography at the University of Washington Medical Centre in Seattle. 

His wife Carrie recalls the impact that Fellowship had on Malcolm and his career and what he was able to do to benefit patients as a result. 

“Malcolm would be very humbled and quietly thrilled to have the Fellowship established in his name.  This is an amazing legacy and my family and I are hugely grateful to Malcolm’s dear friend and colleague Professor Rob Doughty and to the Heart Foundation for enabling this to happen,” Carrie says.

“Malcolm had a very deep respect for the work of the Heart Foundation and it’s wonderful to see his legacy live on. We know he would be smiling to see this initiative come to life and for Fergus and Craig to have the opportunity to undertake this vital research overseas, as he did, which will have so much long-term benefit.” 

Heart Foundation Medical Director Dr Gerry Devlin says the remarkable fundraising effort that made the new fellowship possible is a fitting tribute to Malcolm - a long-serving and deeply valued member of the Heart Foundation board and a past recipient of an overseas fellowship.