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Prevention the best medicine for athletes

Warm weekend forecast means more fluids required

“Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.”

That was one of the messages pumped out at Wednesday’s opening ceremony for the 2011 B.C. Seniors Games and it was repeated again by medical co-director Dr. Nelson Ames.

With the weekend weather forecasted to be in the high 20’s and low 30’s with lots of sunshine, Ames reminded athletes and spectators to stay hydrated and in the shade as much as possible.

At the halfway point of the Games, medical centres and volunteer staff in each of the host cities have attended to athlete’s injuries and concerns, but nothing extreme as of yet.

Evergreen Sports and Physical Therapy is the local medical centre in Trail for the Games. Owner and physiotherapist Brian Reimer said the clinic has been relatively quiet.

According to him, only three athletes have needed to use the centre’s services for minor injuries.

Seven incidents were recorded in Trail yesterday but details of those were not made public.

Ames said all three centres have treated athletes but nothing has come up they weren’t expecting.

“The usual kind of sports related complaints — overuse, cuts and scrapes, sprains and strains, some wasp or bee stings,” he explained.

Ames receives reports daily from the centres about incidents that took place but was unable to say what the most common injury was so far after two days of events.

He reported that nothing serious has happened in any of the host cities but they are prepared if things take a turn for the worse.

In a previous interview with Ames, heat-related issues were the medical directorate’s main concern, due to the Games location this year and the fact that this is the first time they have been held in August.

Ames wasn’t aware of any heat issues at this point in time, but said medical services is still concerned about the outdoor temperatures.

“It hasn’t been as hot as we were planning for but I think if it was steadily over 30 degrees Celcius we might,” he commented. “Either people are taking really good care of themselves or it’s not hot enough — I’m not sure which it is, but we aren’t seeing any problems.”