Just a quick alert that Richard Budgett, the Chief Medical Office for the London Olympics, shares his very special insights.

He was an Olympic Gold medal winner in Los Angeles before serving the UK and now the world!

Click here for the podcast

And remember, the IOC, through its Medical Commission, supports the 4 of the 16 issues of British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) annually. See recent editorial about Youth Olympic Games here. The BJSM is the leading clinical source of sports and exercise medicine.

UKsem was the first conference to have a ‘Moneyball’ panel session; attendees voted with their feet that this should happen again. What’s ‘Moneyball’? The unabridged term refers to Michael Lewis’ book of that name. It’s about a baseball team who performed much better than they should have by recruiting cheap players who didn’t have the ‘look’ of top draft picks but whose statistics were impeachable. The implication is that an astute statistician may help to recruit this type of player whereas a ‘sport expert’ might be fooled by intangibles – the style, the charisma, pedigree – but in the end things that don’t predict success as well as the carefully analyzed data. The concept was in the news in Australia just today.

In the sports medicine setting, Dr John Orchard raised raised the concept in 2009. He’d read the book (didn’t wait for the Brad Pitt movie) and figured that team physios and team sports physicians could augment team performance. This appreciation, literally valuing of the sports medicine / fitness team would lead to great salaries for those individuals. At the conference Moneyball session, Liverpool Football Club’s Peter Brukner estimated that many soccer/football clubs in the English Premier League have annual player salaries over 100 million GBP but pay less than 0.5% of that for ‘maintenance’ – the sports medicine team. Seems crazy and I suspect that in Formula 1 the investment in the ‘asset’ would be much higher.

Security sit - ready for action - at Liverpool vs. Chelsea, November 20, 2011

Also in the UKsem session was power lawyer Mary O’Rourke, QC, who is clearly a pre-eminent sports lawyer in the UK. She emphasized the risk that sports physicians are at when taking care of players who might be earning over 100,000 GPB per week. Is your personal liability insurance in place for the 40 million GPB or so you might be sued for?  I didn’t realize that as Dick Steadman operates in Colorado, the legislation in that stats caps any medicolegal claim at $10 million. In the UK, there is no cap. Food for thought for both players, and physicians. Lots of players have value greater than $10 million.

There was also an introduction to the idea of clincians using agents to help them get better deals in this new world. Clinicians valued more = larger contracts = need for help with negotiation and for digging out the good gigs. Makes sense.

A great idea for future conferences in the UK and beyond. I can see it traveling very well at AMSSM in Atlanta 2012, the VSG (Netherlands), Australia, Switzerland, South Africa, and among the ECOSEP member countries.

For a detailed movie review and background to Moneyball click here please.

And on the subject of Liverpool Football Club, it seems like Brad Pitt is a fan!

AFC Conference on Science & Football Medicine

Kuala Lumpur March 18-20, 2011

The past 3 Asian Science and Football conferences (Tokyo; Kuala Lumpur & Muscat) were a great success with approx. 450 participants from all over the world.

KL promises a great program of keynote address symposiums, free papers, poster presentations  and clinical workshops in Sports Medicine.  It’s a “Low cost High output” activity at an excellent destination “Malaysia Truely Asia” – value for money. Here is the website: www.the-afc.com and you can email s.medicine@the-afc.com.

Be part of a stellar sport and exercise medicine event promoting Football for Health. Abstract deadline is January 31, 2011. Terrific destination for colleagues and friends.

Best wishes

Dato’ Gurucharan Singh
Chairman, OC for AFC Conference on Science and Football Medicine / Scientific Committtee

ECOSEP Congress is an international interdisciplinary event which is held every two years and attracts over 400 participants from all over Europe.

This year it will take place with the 12^TH Annual Scientific Conference in Sport & Exercise Medicine, Centre for Sport & Exercise Medicine, Queen Mary, University of London.

The 2^nd ECOSEP congress will be held in London 9-11^th September 2010. Prof  Nicola Maffulli, Dr. John King , Prof Charls Galasko, Prof Karim Khan, Dr. Nat Padhiar, Zoe Hudson, and Dr. N Malliaropoulos form part of the organising committee and we welcome contributions from Sports Medicine physicians, Physicians, Rehabilitation medicine physicians, Orthopaedic surgeons, Podiatrists, Podiatric surgeons, Academics, Researchers, Physiotherapists, Osteopaths, Manual therapists, and Exercise therapists.

This will be an important meeting which we hope will galvanise sports physicians into action in preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London.

The Organising and Scientific Committee welcomed you to join participate as a delegate or as an Oral or Poster presenter.

www.ecosep.eu

www.aesculap-academia.co.uk

We would like to invite you to join us in London UK Queen Mary for the 2nd ECOSEP Congress European College of Sport & Exercise Physicians, 12th Annual Scientific Conference in SEM.

This international interdisciplinary Sports Medicine congress held every two years, attracts over 400 participants from all over Europe and welcomes sports medicine physicians, physicians, orthopaedic surgeons, academics, researchers, physiotherapists, osteopaths, manual therapists, exercise therapists rehabilitation medicine physicians and students.

For more information and to submit and abstract visit the conference website: www.aesculap-academia.co.uk OR www.ecosep.eu.

To view and download a PDF, click here.