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Throughout the Olympics and Paralympics, most of us stayed glued to the athletes, celebrating the big wins like we were right there with them. But behind every emotional moment was a team of healthcare professionals helping the highest caliber athletes perform at the top of their game. While we seldom hear stories about the healthcare workers at the Olympics and Paralympics, their days are often just as action-packed as the athletes, sometimes working 20-plus hour days to make the Games a success.
“It appears to be a very glamorous life, and it is far from that — sleeping on cardboard beds with multiple roommates and no toilet paper,” says Amber Donaldson, DPT, SCS, CSCS, FACSM — the vice president of sports medicine for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) who worked at both the Olympics and Paralympics. From helping a competitor who collapsed after running with COVID to treating athletes who fell ill from swimming in the Seine, Dr. Donaldson and her colleagues had to handle it all. Read on for a deeper dive into Dr. Donaldson’s not-so-typical day at work, and find out why the long days are so worth it.
The Workday Started Before Sunrise
“My days start very early and [I’m] on call, so that could mean a lot of things,” Dr. Donaldson recalls. She would usually go down to the clinic around 6:30 a.m., do laundry, get ice, clean out tubs, and help get set up for the athletes. Around 8:00 a.m., the clinic opened for any athletes seeking treatment. “Sometimes that’s taping someone before they go out to practice and games, or someone woke up with stomach pain, or they were vomiting, or a stuffy nose, or whatever that looks like,” Dr. Donaldson says. “We assess illness and do tests around that.” Depending on the results, athletes may require isolation, as well as separate cleaning, and transportation. “It’s a lot of managing what those individuals need,” she says.
Tasks and Needs Varied From Day to Day
Sometimes even Dr. Donaldson was surprised by where the day took her. In a mere 24 hours at the Paralympics, she tended to anti-doping (about 800 people helped chaperone the anti-doping process at the Paris Games, notifying athletes about their tests and accompanying them through the process), went with athletes to pick up their prescriptions, accompanied someone to the ER due to illness, and took a urine sample up to get a culture — each individual act a labor of love.
“There’s an incredible behind the scenes happening that hopefully the athletes don’t even realize.”
“There’s an incredible behind the scenes happening that hopefully the athletes don’t even realize,” she says, pointing to the time Team USA medical pros spent installing 400 portable air conditioners before the athletes even arrived. “That’s our team doing all of that to make this feel like home and that they’re loved and supported by their country.”
On the topic of what athletes need, Dr. Donaldson explains that it takes a well-organized group of healthcare providers to make sure athletes are well-equipped to compete. “There is so much equipment, especially on the Paralympic side,” she says. “Today, someone forgot their medication in their room, so we had to coordinate with security and housing to get into the room and then [ask] transportation to get it out to the athlete.”
Dr. Donaldson also mentions that, contrary to popular belief, Team USA does not receive any government funding. That means everything is paid for by private sponsorship and donors, like the healthcare brand FIGS, which outfitted the 250+ healthcare professionals at the Games. “There’s a lot of resources needed,” she says. “It’s so challenging and so expensive for athletes to get the equipment they need to just live their daily life,” specifically referencing the medical equipment Paralympians need in order to compete (prosthetics, mobility aids, etc.).
Finding Balance Was Tough
Dr. Donaldson was an advocate for Olympic and Paralympic athletes, but her every day career in physical therapy didn’t just go away when the Games started. In addition to her packed schedule at the Games, she also worked her regular job back at home, holding meetings that went until 1:00 a.m at times. Then, she’d get about two to three hours of sleep and “do it all over again,” Dr. Donaldson says. “[That’s] what it looks like for me for 60 days while we’re here for the Games,” although she adds that the medical team does get some down time to watch the events. Still, to her, the competitors made the long days worth it.
“Getting to work with so many different athletes and individuals in the movement, it’s pretty powerful,” Dr. Donaldson says. “Being there for them and [supporting] their goals and helping them transition — wherever that looks like in life — is a pretty special place to be.”
Chandler Plante is an assistant editor for PS Health & Fitness. Previously, she worked as an editorial assistant for People magazine and contributed to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Group. In her free time, she overshares on the internet, creating content about chronic illness, beauty, and disability.