PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE SPREADING THE

Taking part as one of a 50 strong international massage team at the Paralympics in Athens was an amazing and unique experi- ence. This article provides a description of the author’s experiences.

By Kathrine Crompton, MSMA

The adventure started after I received the Sports Massage Association’s email in January 2004 asking for people to be part of a sports massage team for the Olympics and Paralympics in Athens with a website and e-mail address for further details. I decided to apply. I had worked at the Commonwealth games in Manchester in 2002 and had enjoyed working with the athletes and being part of a large team involved with the one aim of doing what we could to help the athletes achieve their best. Applying involved filling in a form, getting two references and writing a letter of intent. On March 31, I heard that I had been accepted to be part of the Paralympic massage team. I applied to do both the Olympics and Paralympics. I had no concerns about working with disabled athletes if that was what I was chosen to do, as I had worked with people with dis- abilities as part of my sports massage training.

I did not really know what to expect or how it was going to pan out. I arrived in the early hours of the 9 September and at breakfast there were lots of people whom I learned would become my new col- leagues. I got my accreditation with no hitches and was ready to go to work. In the sports massage contingent there were five of us from the UK, one from Australia and the rest came from Canada and the United States. The US group contained people who originated from other countries so we were truly international. This was to help on occasions with language barriers. The Paralympics provided an opportunity to work with disabled athletes from around the world.

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THE TRAINING VENUE I worked in the training venue called Dekelia, which was an old air force base next to the Paralympic village. The first couple of days, before the athletes arrived, were spent finding our way around this rather large site, meeting the site leaders and the doc- tors. The athletes that used the training venues were from a wide variety of sports including wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, judo, boccia, fencing, athletics and archery.

Initially, a lot of our time was spent in advertising the availabil- ity and existence of the massage service not just for the athletes but also for the people working in the two venues in the village. One of the first athletes I shook hands with was a guy from Iraq, it was nice to see that despite all the troubles in their country, a team had still been sent.

My first challenge was that a lot of massage was conducted through clothing, something that I didn’t have a lot of experience of. As this was an event there were the obvious restrictions on what sort of massage you could do anyway. Working through the clothing meant that techniques were limited to smaller effleurage and petrissage movements and some light compressions. My pre- vious experience of a large event was one where the athletes were able-bodied. They came and lay on a massage couch and it was easy to give the massage. In Dekelia we soon got used to dealing with whatever was thrown at you. Often it was just a quick shoul- der massage to a wheelchair athlete after training, it had to be

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