Toby is now back from his final tour support role for the year after a 5-week stint on the road with Triathlon.
It has been an enormous year again on the road with this role taking our treatment coverage back to Japan again for the Olympic test event, a small town in France near the Swiss border and then finishing the year in Lausanne in Switzerland for the World Triathlon Series Grand Final.
It’s been a great year this year, with some spectacular locations to work from.
It is back into the week to week routine again at the clinic now for the rest of the year until what is shaping up to be another huge year again in 2020.
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Toby is back on deck again at the clinic after returning from Naples in Italy with the Australian Swimming Team for the past three weeks.
Toby worked as a part of the support team for the duration of the meet, which included sports science, sports medicine, coaches, management staff and about 26 swimmers.
A very cool looking warm up pool.
The event was quite the unique set up with the athlete’s village for all countries being two large cruise ships that were docked for the duration of the games.
The breakfast view of Mount Vesuvius from the deck on the athlete’s village cruise ship.
This was easily the best backdrop for providing sports massage tour support so far, but hopefully, this gets challenged later on this year in Switzerland for the WTS Grand Final with Triathlon.
Toby has been selected to be a part of the Australian Team medical headquarters team that will head across to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to support our Australian team next year.
Very similar to the headquarters team that he was a part of for the Commonwealth Games last year, the team will be made up of a combination of sports medicine professionals from across the country.
There are eight soft tissue therapists within the team, all with various backgrounds from Remedial Massage, Soft Tissue Therapists & Sports Myotherapists.
Until then there is plenty of work to be done both locally and internationally for our athletes qualifying and preparing for their biggest event on the calendar.
It has continued to be a busy year supporting different Australian athletes both locally and abroad.
In July, I headed across to Canada with the Australian Paratriathlon team for a few of their races.
The first race was a world cup race in Magog, just a couple of hours away from Montreal. The second event was a World Paratriathlon Series (WPS) race in Edmonton, the top tier race for the Para Triathletes that runs alongside the able-bodied athlete’s World Triathlon Series (WTS) event.
I arrived at Magog a couple of days after the rest of the team as I had been in camp at the AIS in Canberra before leaving with Swimming Australia. So we had around half the team with us for this half of the trip, and the remainder would be joining us when we got into Edmonton.
On Friday after arriving I went to the race briefing as I would be working as a handler on race day so needed to make sure I knew the specifics for the day to make sure things went as smoothly as possible for Emily Tapp, the athlete I was going to be assisting. After a couple of short pre-event sports massage treatments, the team was set for the racing the following day.
On race day, the athletes were ready to go and took off in their various wave starts. Overall the team performed great with a few podium performances and some great learning opportunities for some newer members in their first international competition. The plan leading into this race was to give the athletes a chance to race and adapt after the travel from Australia in time for the more critical Edmonton WPS race coming up.
The Australian athletes that raced the first race of the tour in Magog, Quebec.
Over the next week, it was a matter of focussing on training and recovery to get ready for the travel to Edmonton and race ahead. I worked together with the athletes to provide treatment for various niggles and provided some of the newer members some guidance regarding some specific flexibility work. The training in Magog was excellent, having Lake Memphremagog a short walk from the hotel for Swimming, plenty of safe riding options and some good trails nice and close.
After another week, the team mechanic and I left early to meet the rest of the team and get everything sorted in Edmonton. The training around Edmonton was not quite as good as Magog as many the roads were under maintenance works whilst the snow was not present. However, the athletes could still hit some good sessions at the local university pool, trails close by and trainer sessions on the bike out of the hotel.
It was a busy couple of days of treatment, trying to see all the athletes before their race on the weekend. There was a great vibe around the race site and hotel, and it was clear that this was a big step up from the previous small town race in Magog.
Race day rolled around quickly once the whole team had arrived, and the athletes were looking forward to getting stuck into racing on a challenging course. The biggest challenge was the bike course which featured four laps with a sharp pinch of a hill. This created a real challenge for everyone on the team and allowed anyone who had good legs on the bike to put in some big time gaps.
Liam Twomey on the run leg in Edmonton.
The team had some quality results across the board on race day with one of our athletes Jonathan Goerlach getting his first WPS victory with guide Sam Douglas. It was awesome watching these two guys on the side of the bike course tearing through the field.
Once all the athletes were done on course, we had to get all the gear back to the hotel. A quick post-race check up with all the athletes and a post-event sports massage and our day was almost done.
We packed up Saturday night / Sunday morning and started taking different athletes to the airport before heading home myself.
The next stop for this group is to head home and prepare for the World Championships later in the year that we are hosting on the Gold Coast where we will be trying to claim some titles on home soil.
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.
The Australian Medical Headquarters Team for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
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.
The Team Plaque was presented to all members of the Australian Team by Steve Moneghetti.
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.
Marching with the Australian Team Athletes & Staff during the opening ceremony.
I have recently got back into work at the clinic in South Melbourne after a 6.5-week stint in Thailand with the VIS Triathlon program working with the athletes to manage their bodies through a heavy training block leading into two crucial races that played a part in world champs qualification later in the year in Cozumel.
In addition to the triathletes from the VIS, we also had some athletes from the National Talent Academy (NTA) in Queensland visit for some training after their first race in Gamagori, Japan.
There could be worse views than poolside at Thanyapura!
Overall it was a fairly consistent routine for the group, with the training & treatment following a pretty typical routine for the athletes each week. In addition to the swim, bike & run training, there are typically three sessions a week in the gym focussing on various areas of weakness that have been determined to be of importance for that athlete back at home by their strength & conditioning screenings.
Dry needling on the lower legs following a tough days training.
My role in Thailand was to ensure the boys were recovering well and helping to prepare them for upcoming training. A combination of hands-on treatment including various massage techniques, joint mobilisation, assisted stretching & dry needling was typically used and depending on the athlete, the squad would normally get between 1 & 3 sessions of some type of treatment per week with variation in treatment lengths, sometimes requiring a more extended session while other times just focussing on some mobilisation of a specific joint / region before a training session.
Race pace efforts on the road in training.
As I knew the group quite well, having treated the squad for six months before leaving Melbourne, the injury management process was relatively straightforward compared to travelling abroad with a substantially larger number of unknown athletes like in 2014 & 2015.
Overall it was a great experience to assist the group in Thailand. It was awesome to see that all three qualification slots for Australia have since been filled from within the training group, a great effort from all athletes, coaches & support staff involved to seal all three spots for the U23 division.
Hopefully, some more big results to come from the group later in the year at Cozumel for the World Champs!
Group shot on departure with some of the regular staff from our time at the hotel.
