By Rob Scott, Chef de Mission Tug of War 2022
Another great success this year, as far as chiropractic is concerned, with, I think, record numbers of patients.
Elena Guisasola, from the Basque country, joined me for the whole event, and Carly Zuehlke came along for the Friday. My thanks go to both of them but particularly to Elena for sticking with me for the whole 4 days. It was quite brutal at times with rain, the wind trying to lift our tent out of the ground, no coffee (for a while) and a constant stream of patients – amounting to 237 separate visits.
Every year a different country discovers us and this year we saw more French people and a few Netherlanders. The word is spreading, but the usual suspects were all there.
My thanks to TWIF for their great organisational skills and the local team who ran the competition. They were incredibly helpful and bent over backwards to accommodate our needs. We tend not to have many, however this year, it became apparent that we were inadequately equipped in one area. I raise this example as I believe it is something that we should already be prepared for having now encountered it.
We had a Muslim girl who asked for some form of the screen to be in place for her treatment, in line with her beliefs. As you can imagine, there were not a lot of options in the middle of a field in Holland, but fortunately, a screen was eventually found. Even if this never happens again, we all just need to be prepared.
I flagged it up with TWIF at the time but need to raise this to reiterate that some sort of planning should be made for future events to ensure that all our FICS chiropractors are aware of such potential needs and have knowledge of where to swiftly find sufficient equipment to fulfil them.
I know that the FICS planning was a little behind the curve this year with the World Games and the Exco meeting in Barcelona taking up a lot of time, but we really do need at least 3 chiropractors at these events, and we need to start advertising for volunteers well in advance. Next year we will be asked to go to the Indoors in Northern Ireland on 8th-11th March and the World Championships in Switzerland on 31st August-3rd September (https://tow2023.ch/). If we can get local chiropractors to pop in for just a day or two throughout the competition, there is no cost implication for them from TWIF’s perspective, and they could easily help out the resident chiropractors when it gets busy.
TWIF is organising a banner for us which will then become part of their travel bag and will be advertising our whereabouts at all future events. We do now get a good spot where the athletes are able to easily find us and I believe this is a vital part of our accessibility.
Lastly, spare a thought for poor Elena, who was delayed at Schipol at security (presumably post Covid under manning) and missed her flight and had to spend the night in the terminal before finding new flights home the next day!
