Sports medicine vital for sports people

Dilanka MANNAKKARA

Sports medicine is of vital importance for sports people and it is a field that has grown in leaps and bounds in the recent past.

The National Olympic Council organized a two-day seminar on Sports medicine and Anti Doping and its importance at the Olympic House and it was attended by a large number of well-known doctors, trainers, physiotherapists and coaches from a wide range of sports.

Dr. M Jegathesan

Professor Jaspal Sandhu

'Daily News' had the privilege of interviewing two world famous personalities in Sports medicine who were invited to conduct guest lectures, namely Dr. M Jegathesan who is the Chairman of the Medical committee of Asia and Professor Jaspal Sandhu who is the Dean of the Faculty of Sports medicine and Physiotherapy in the Guru Nanak Dev university, Amritsar, India.

These two professionals who are veterans of sports medicine gave their thoughts about Sri Lanka's sports medicine and a number of other areas.

These are some excerpts from the EXCLUSIVE interview with the 'Daily News'.

Q: Part of the program is to create awareness about Sports Medicine in Sri Lanka, can you elaborate more on that?

A: yes. There is not much awareness about this broad subject although it is very important in conditioning an athlete and training him towards world standards. Sri Lanka compared to other countries has realized the importance of Sports medicine and considering the size of the country and the population, I am happy to say that there is a lot of enthusiasm towards this. You have over 20 Doctors of Sports Medicine in Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka has one of the best sports medicine training centres in Asia along with China and India.

Q: What is the importance of Sports Medicine for athletes?

A: Sports medicine is the discipline that looks after the health, welfare of the athletes including prevention, the treatment and the rehabilitation and also various sports sciences including nutrition, mental preparation. Its a very wide subject and is essential for the modern athletes to succeed and go on to the next level.

Q: What does the International Olympic Council and The Asian Olympic Council do to promote Sports medicine?

A: We are provided with funds to promote Sports Medicine and we travel to most of the countries and conduct awareness program and lectures regarding the importance of Sports Medicine.

This is a prime example of the IOC promoting sports medicine and Sri Lanka has been in forefront of Sports Medicine.

Q: Is sports medicine only for athletes?

A: It is not, it is also for people like you and me as nutrition is a key part of it. Asians have a high vulnerability of diabetes and heart attacks, so it is important for each and every person. A person after a bypass surgery has to undergo physiotheraphy. This is all a part of sports medicine.

Q: What is anti doping?

A: This is to prevent sports personnel from taking performance enhancing drugs. We are concerned about the measures to reduce anti doping which has become a major problem in sports. We follow the WADA code and we try to institute it. There is a certain list of banned substances for athletes and they should be aware of it.

Q: Why is it that only random checks are done for athletes instead of checking all the athletes ?

A: It is too expensive to conduct tests on everyone .We also don't have the time, the money and the resources to do it on each and every athlete, but it is important that the athlete should be aware that he could be checked on any time,at any place.

Q: As an example,it took a long time to prove that Champion sprinter Marion Jones was guilty, why was this?

A: It's a long process because it involves a lot of legal implications and procedures. If we rush, they might find loopholes in the law, so we must be absolutely sure that it is properly done.