Medical planning for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games Your country will need you MJA 1997; 167: 593-594 Make a comment - Register to be notified of new articles by e-mail - Current contents list - ©MJA1997

Introduction

Planning for an Olympic Games is in one sense unique. It involves deploying resources (human, logistic and material) on a scale almost unprecedented in peacetime. This is for a transient spectacle that rarely returns to the same country, an event equivalent to holding 28 World Championships simultaneously in one city. It is incumbent on planners for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games to draw on the wealth of experience already available, both in Australia and other countries. This includes at least 18 scientific manuscripts published (or in press) on activities of the Medical Program at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics;1-19 three of these articles1-3 appear in this issue of the Journal (see Brennan et al., Eaton et al., and Keim and Williams). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has entrusted the task of staging the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games to the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), together with the New South Wales (NSW) Government and the City of Sydney. SOCOG's Medical Program is responsible for facilitating the health and wellbeing not only of the members of the Olympic Family (athletes, officials, administrators, staff and volunteers), but also of hundreds of thousands of spectators at the 35 competition venues. The NSW Department of Health, in collaboration with SOCOG, will administer services relating to public health, medical disaster planning, hospitals and health care interpreters. The Ambulance Service of NSW and St John Ambulance are also key participants. Under the aegis of the IOC Medical Commission, SOCOG, through the Chief Medical Officer, is also responsible for administering both the IOC's doping control program, as well as the gender verification program for women competitors. The Olympic Games are centre-stage for scrutinising the abuse of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, and Australia has a proud record to maintain in the fight against doping. The Australian Sports Drug Agency (ASDA) conducts over 3000 tests annually, either in competition or unannounced. ASDA will provide some training services for the extra personnel needed for the Games. Sydney is also fortunate in already having the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory (ASDTL), the first such facility in the southern hemisphere with IOC accreditation. In conjunction with Sports Medicine Australia, SOCOG will help to organise the 5th IOC Congress on Sport Sciences, to be held in Sydney in November 1999. The Olympic Games provide the opportunity for elite sports medicine research. SOCOG will facilitate a series of biomechanics research projects to be carried out at the Games under the auspices of the IOC Medical Commission. Such projects serve to illustrate that performance can be enhanced by means other than doping. What personnel and resources are needed? We anticipate that planning and implementing the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Medical Program will require about 4500 volunteers from a variety of health care backgrounds to supplement the handful of salaried SOCOG staff. We also envisage that much of the equipment and consumables will be made available through donation or sponsorship. Volunteers will need not only to have first-rate professional skills, but to be able to work in newly assembled teams in an exciting, if at times stressful and unfamiliar, environment. We hope that many who volunteer for the Olympic Games will also assist at the less "glamorous" Paralympic Games. This large and extraordinary event will involve over 4000 athletes with disabilities participating over 10 days of elite competition. Those who give their time to work with the Paralympic Games will be rewarded with a unique and inspirational experience. From 1998 to 2000, a series of "test events" will be held to evaluate venues and logistics, albeit on a small scale. We plan to begin the call for Medical Program volunteers in mid 1998, with the support of the relevant professional colleges, societies, associations and health authorities. What lessons can we learn from previous Olympic Games? Although many aspects of Olympic medical programs remain constant, operational and logistic factors may vary substantially. For example, compared with Atlanta, Sydney enjoys much closer collaboration between the organising committee and government and also between the Olympic and Paralympic organising committees. Hospital and ambulance services in Atlanta were provided via a series of private hospitals, one of which (Crawford Long Hospital) was chosen for athlete care (as described by Keim and Williams,3). In Sydney, a single State-run ambulance service and designated public hospitals will be involved. Surprisingly for such a large event, in Atlanta there were only 306 ambulance transfers and fewer than 70 hospital admissions from Olympic venues (and similar numbers in Barcelona in 1992). However, the potential impact of the Games on the provision of normal hospital and ambulance services needs to be, and is being, considered during planning. Another major difference between Atlanta and Sydney is the Olympic Village Polyclinic. This will provide general and sports medical care for up to a month for the 15 300 Village residents (athletes and team officials) plus several thousand SOCOG support staff (equivalent to the population of a medium-sized country town). In Atlanta, the Polyclinic was housed in the Student Health Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology together with an adjacent Sports Performance Centre, as the Village used campus dormitories for accommodation (see Eaton et al.,2). In contrast, in Sydney all Polyclinic services will be in one building. We will not have the luxury of a dedicated health care facility, as the Polyclinic is destined to become a primary school for the new Sydney suburb of Newington. This poses interesting challenges in design and fit-out which need to be addressed in detail now. The operational aspects of public health programs, emergency medical care and disaster preparedness in Atlanta are well summarised by Brennan et al.1). We face similar organisational challenges in Sydney, except for the lower likelihood of heat-related illnesses, as our Games will be held in spring. We must prepare for the possibility of a disaster (natural or man-made) either within a venue or outside (as happened in Atlanta, with the Centennial Park bombing, and more recently in Israel, at the Maccabiah Games, where a bridge used by competitors collapsed). The Medical Program in Atlanta was well run, thanks to careful planning, good management and the selfless involvement of thousands of volunteers. Sydney has considerable expertise in medical management of mass gatherings (e.g., the annual City-to-Surf run and the 1988 Bicentennial celebrations). Preparations for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games began even before the successful bid was announced in 1993, and detailed operational planning is now well under way. In cooperation with government, in consultation with a variety of agencies and individuals, and hopefully with the enthusiastic support of health care professionals from Sydney and throughout Australia, we will achieve the same success at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2000. Daniel Stiel Chief Medical Officer Patsy Trethowan Manager Medical Program Nicki Vance Manager Doping Control Program Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games Brennan RJ, Keim ME, Sharp TW, et al. Medical and public health services at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games: an overview. Med J Aust 1997; 167: 595-598. Eaton SB, Woodfin BA, Askew JL, et al. 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