2018 Commonwealth Games
My blog from the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games
I was lucky enough to be selected to be a part of the Australian Medical Headquarters team as a Soft Tissue Therapist at our home games on the Gold Coast.
The selection process for this started around 12 months before the games. After being nominated by one of the national sporting federations, It was then a tedious wait until I found out in mid-2017 that I was successful.
The Australian Team Medical Headquarters team comprised of 5 Sports Doctors, 5 Sports Physiotherapists, 7 Soft Tissue Therapists, 2 Sports Psychologists, 2 Recovery Physiologists, 1 Sports Dietician & a clinic manager.
It all kicked off heading up to the Gold Coast on the 25thof March with some of the other Australian team members from Melbourne. The first day was a busy logistically, getting our village accreditation sorted out, collecting our uniforms, and looking around the village. We rounded out a big first day by doing our official Australian team induction, which was run by the Chef de Mission Steve Moneghetti, which set the expectations for the weeks ahead.
For the first week, our accommodation was within the athlete’s village before more sports arrived for the competition, which meant we moved out of the village to the base where the rest of the Australian staff and coaches were staying. The first week was quite light from a workload point of view, with only a couple of sports having moved into the village, including weightlifting, table tennis, hockey & wrestling.
We managed to take full advantage of the games room whilst our workload allowed. The soft tissue therapy doubles combination’s in table tennis managed to remain undefeated on the centre court.
The last main event before the competition kicked off was the opening ceremony which the majority of the sports medicine team got to march in. This was one of the highlights for me, being able to march at a home game’s with colleagues I would be working with to support the Aussie athletes over the next couple of weeks. It was also great to see a couple of the regular athletes from the clinic back home out there soaking it up.
Once it all kicked off, it was just a matter of following the daily routine. Turn up to the clinic at the athlete’s village for our rostered sessions and treat any of the athletes from the Australian team that had booked in for treatment, while trying to coordinate with each other to go out to watch some of the events live when possible.
The athletes tried to mimic their usual pre and post-event routines with the services offered at the clinic, which included sports massage, dry needling, stretching, taping, injury assessment and acute injury management. The clinic did a great job in allowing the athletes to feel ready to perform at their best come competition time.
Some of the sports such as Athletics, Swimming & Cycling had their own sports medicine team with them, but apart from that, the majority of the Australian team utilised the Headquarters clinic.
Overall it was a great event to be a part of and a once-in-a-life time opportunity to work at a home Commonwealth Games. The Gold Coast did an amazing job putting on the event and left everyone on the team with plenty of memories to look back on.
Four years to go now till the next one!
Toby