Abstract
The protection of an athlete’s health is an important task for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Systematic injury and illness surveillance monitors trends over long periods of time, and the identification of high-risk sports, including their most common and severe injuries and illnesses, provides valuable knowledge to reduce the risk of occurrence. During the XXIX Summer Beijing 2008 and XXI Winter Games Vancouver 2010, comprehensive recording of injuries and illnesses through the medical staff of the participating National Olympic Committees and the sports medicine clinics at the different Olympic venues revealed that at least 7–11 % of all athletes incurred an injury or suffered at least from one illness occurrence during the Games. The incidence of injuries and illnesses varied substantially between sports. In the future, risk factor and video analyses of injury mechanisms in high-risk Olympic sports are essential to better direct injury prevention strategies. Monitoring the athlete’s health during the pre-Game period through periodic health exams will be important to optimize health protection.
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Acknowledgments
The research group wishes to acknowledge sincere gratefulness to the President of the IOC Medical Commission, Professor Arne Ljungqvist, and to NOCs and IFs for their strong support for these studies. We gratefully acknowledge the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for funding these studies. We also like to give credit to F-MARC for initiating the systematic assessment of the injuries from 1998.
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Engebretsen, L., Steffen, K., Soligard, T. (2015). Injury Risk in the Olympic Games. In: Glaudemans, A., Dierckx, R., Gielen, J., Zwerver, J. (eds) Nuclear Medicine and Radiologic Imaging in Sports Injuries. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46491-5_51
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