REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS TO CELEBRATE 10 YEARS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS TO CELEBRATE 10 YEARS OF MASTERS IN SPORTS MEDICINE
Tá gliondar orm bheith i bhur measc inniu. Míle bhuíochas as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom teacht anseo.
I am delighted to be here this evening to officially open this International Congress to celebrate “10 years of Masters in Sports Medicine” and I thank Professor Moira O’Brien for the invitation and I thank you for that warm welcome. May I in turn say a special “Céad Míle Fáilte”, a hundred thousand welcomes to each of you and in particular to those visiting Ireland whether for the first time or coming back to us again for this conference.
The excellent reputation of sports medicine in Ireland owes a considerable debt to the work of Moira O’Brien and her colleagues. The foundation of the Irish Sports Medicine Association, with Moira as its first President, helped to seed-bed a fresh new culture of high level services and supports for our athletes and sports enthusiasts. And of course Moira took the text-books and the theories out of the classroom, far away from the ivory towers to the changing rooms reeking of wintergreen when she served as team doctor to the Irish teams at the Olympics in 1980, 1984 and 1988.
Back in Ireland’s most illustrious seat of learning, Trinity College , she was instrumental in creating the Diploma and Masters of Science degree in Sports Medicine. That generosity of your time and talent has been a huge gift to all of us who share a common love of sport and who cherish the store of proud sporting memories we have experienced through the years. I wish you, Moira, many happy years of retirement.
Despite enthusiastic participation in many sports myself over the years from badminton to camogie, I regret to say my only notable achievement was to be declared man of the match for a botched assault with an umbrella on a referee in a football match my husband Martin was playing in. However, I was always grateful for the expertise of the sports medicine professionals who, on many occasions, came to the rescue and patched Martin up after yet another scuffle on one sports pitch or another.
Here in Ireland we have a passionate love of sport both as participants and spectators. We relish the magic which involvement in sport can work in our lives – the friendships forged, the exhilaration of competing against others and against yourself, the self-discipline demanded by the team, the respect demanded by coaches and selectors, the roar of the crowd, the pride of winning, the heartbreak of losing, the vast store of moods and memories which gather around sport. But those of us who live day in and day out with active athletes know that the achievement of serious levels of fitness and competitiveness is a very complex business which demands a complex and sophisticated range of responses, if it is to be done well and without unnecessary risks. That is where we rely on you, on your expertise, your research, your wise guidance and sure help.
As more demands and heightened expectations are made of medicine generally, the same is particularly true of Sports Medicine. You work in an area colonised in the past by people with a range of startling titles and ambiguous expertise - for every injured player who headed to hospital casualty or a registered expert in sports medicine, there were more who set off for a bone-setter, usually noted for his success with greyhounds, or the man with the charm for sprains. You have brought sports medicine out of the Magic Meg era and into the sober light of credible, creative science, making of it an exciting and dynamic and invaluable discipline.
This Congress is a celebration of your success. The presence here today of so many respected and eminent academics from as far afield as Australia, South Africa and Canada is an affirmation of the significant role played by international collaboration, by cross disciplinary partnership, interdisciplinary pathways and a deep-rooted intellectual curiosity, working at the heart of sports medicine, driving it day in and day out to new insights, fresh wisdom, better practice.
Those of you who have come here know that the skill, experience and knowledge your discipline seeks and needs as its very life-blood, is not to be found in one individual or one place. It is a jigsaw puzzle and each of you hold a piece of that puzzle in your own hands. Here at this Congress, that piece may through discussion with a colleague, find its matching piece and its place in the puzzle. If it does you will leave here with a new view of that piece, fresh insight into its relevance and the energy that comes from breaking through a hermetically sealed mystery and discovering meaning beyond its limits.
We need you to have both the humility to acknowledge the professional expertise of others, and the generosity to share your expertise with those others. That is our, the public’s, best guarantee that at every level of sport, from the world class exponents who lift human potential to new horizons, to the reformed couch potatoes like me who hit the exercise bikes in fits and starts, there will be the very best advice and treatment to prevent injury and to deal most effectively with it when it occurs.
I commend you all for your dedication and commitment to improving treatments for sportsmen and women everywhere and in every sporting discipline. The true measure of success, as Ralph Emerson the 18th century US poet put it, is “to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.” The advances in treatment methods for which many of the people in this room are to be congratulated have no doubt made many, many people “breath easier”.
To the staff of the Anatomy Department of Trinity College, who have worked so hard but hopefully injury free to make this Congress successful - my thanks. I hope that you will leave this congress re-energized in your vocation in Sports Medicine, full of new ideas, and opportunities for future collaborations and of course with many happy memories of your days in Dublin. No doubt, the fruits of your labours will be reflected in the future successes of sports people and in the prevention and treatment of sports injuries in the years ahead.
Mo bhuíochas libh arís. Is iontach an obair atá ar súil agaibh agus guím gach rath oraibh sa todhchaí.