Sports medicine

Sports medicine or sport medicine is an interdisciplinary subspecialty of medicine which deals with the treatment and preventive care of athletes, both amateur and professional. The team includes specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, other personnel, and, of course, the athlete.

First olympic sports medicine team While watching his daughter Louise swim at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Dr. J C Kennedy, a doctor based in London, Ontario in Canada concluded for a variety of reasons that competing athletic teams from Canada should be accompanied by qualified and well organized medical care.

This belief led him to be a founding father of the Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine.

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One of the primary mandates of this society was to provide expert care to Canadian athletes, and in 1972 he was appointed chief medical officer of the first "true" medical team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Related Topics:
1972 - 1972 Summer Olympics - Munich - Germany

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Other countries soon followed this example and assigned medical teams to Olympic athletes.

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Dr. Kennedy's vision was not limited to travelling Canadian athletes. .At a time when sport medicine clinics were unheard of in Canada, he convinced his university's administration to convert a former wrestling "combatives" room into The Athletic Injuries Clinic that officially opened in 1972.

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The first Nautilus equipment in Canada was purchased from funds raised to outfit this clinic.

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Dr. Kennedy inspired and fostered an interest in research in sport medicine, for which the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and London, Ontario have become known.

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