Lindsey Davies: Q&A - Royal College of Physicians

London 2012 Olympics
rehabilitation medicine which is my specialty,
are very similar.
But the same applies outside the
military and outside sport. For example, a
businessman plays squash twice a week and
gets injured and can’t play squash. He gets
a bit less fit, a bit frustrated, and his general
health and psychological health is not as
good. The principle of managing someone
who has an injury that has compromised
their function is the same, only the context
is different. Whether they are a soldier,
an Olympic athlete, a ballet dancer or a
businessman who plays squash – you are
trying to return them to that level or that
higher level of function that is right for them.
How does the challenge of
Q rehabilitation between a ballet
dancer and an elite athlete compare
Ballet is interesting because ballet
A dance medicine is probably less evolved
than sports medicine in some areas, but it
is catching up fast. The concept of trying to
improve conditioning and robustness, and
trying to prevent injuries in dancers is more
commonplace than it used to be.
With any rehabilitation programme there
are two big challenges. One is the immediate
return – the urgency to put someone, a
professional footballer or soldier, back on the
field to do what they need to do. The other is
the long-term consequences of an injury and
the risk of early return. You can get a ballet
dancer back on the stage fast or a footballer
back on the pitch quickly, but people are
increasingly concerned that this need must be
mindful of the long-term consequences.
We all know professional dancers and
athletes whose careers don’t last long
because they suffer long-term problems,
but this is getting better because the
management of injuries has improved.
Is there much collaboration between
Q international medical teams at the
Olympics
We are friendly with most of the
A big nations like the Australians, the
Americans, the Canadians and the New
Zealanders, because we know each other
20 Commentary n June 2011 n www.rcplondon.ac.uk
from the global world of SEM. We talk to
each other, we swop stories. But we don’t
look after each other’s athletes because that
wouldn’t be acceptable. I wouldn’t treat a
New Zealand athlete, for example, unless it
was a Samaritan act. We don’t collaborate
formally in our work, but we all have the same
challenges and issues; we discuss those.
What were the biggest lessons
Q that you learned from the Beijing
Olympics and how would you take them
forward to London 2012
That’s a good question. There are a lot
A of things that will be different about
London and, to some extent, a lot of the
lessons learned from Beijing don’t apply or
are not transferable to London. These include
managing travel, acclimatisation, and being
in a new, strange, non-English speaking
environment. So most of the challenges at
an Olympic Games are related to keeping a
group of athletes healthy on the other side
of the world in a very stressful and fairly
unusual setting.
London presents completely different
challenges that don’t relate to
acclimatisation, environment and foreign
languages. One of the biggest challenges will
be the expectation on the home team – it will
be huge. This could be a really positive thing
or it could be negative. Managing expectation
is critical.
We talked about the bubble – when you
are in the Olympics in Beijing, Athens or
Sydney you are in a bubble and you have
no idea of what is going on back home. The
foreign press and the British press are there,
but you feel removed from the buzz of what
is in the papers. In London, that is just going
to be all over the place. Family and friends
will also be able to say to athletes ‘Oh, I’m
coming down to see you in competition
tomorrow’, whereas before they could only
watch on TV from the other side of the world.
The ability of family and friends to easily
contact and communicate with athletes while
‘There is a lovely statistic from the Athens 2004
Olympics ... Across five events, the difference
between winning gold and silver was half a
second. That’s how close it is’