Surgeon on Olympics Medical team

COLFAX — A Whitman Hospital and Medical Clinics orthopedic surgeon has been appointed to serve on the Medical Committee of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. W. Douglas B. Hiller, is on the Medical Committee of the Event Advisory Group for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, 2024 Europe Triathlon Baltic Championships and the 2024 World Triathlon Development Regional Cup.

Dr. Hiller said that there is a medical structure for the Olympic Games, including a representative of the Olympic sports and a governing body, that oversees the plans for taking care of the athletes.

“The people who take care are the organizing committee, a medical committee that takes plan at every venue,” Hiller said, noting that there are endurance boards that go through extensive planning.

The 2024 Olympic Games will not be the first time Dr. Hiller has served on the Medical Committee for Olympic events, having served in Sydney 2000, Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008 and the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games.

Dr. Hiller was the Chief Medical Officer for triathlon and the Paralympic games in Tokyo and Rio.

According to Dr. Hiller, there are several different ways the medical committee oversees the safety of the Olympic games athletes, including checking water quality for swim courses, maintaining turns for bicycle courses and ensuring that ambulances can reach those on running courses.

Dr. Hiller said the medical staff will monitor the ocean itself during the Olympics, including making sure that waters are safe for swimmers.

“The threats of marine life, it can be sharks in Australia, stinging organisms,” he said, mentioning that water quality is often a big issue, much like temperature.

“In Tokyo, the water is so warm that the Japanese surrounded the swim course with giant curtains from the surface to the bottom,” Dr. Hiller said, adding that there were big turbines that would pump the cold water so that the cooler water from the deeper areas would rise to make the water temperatures safe for swimmers.

The medical committee will typically have boats with life support and sometimes even scuba divers, Dr. Hiller said, noting that all of that has to be coordinated before hand to get local resources.

There are also several big dangers bicyclists have to face, Dr. Hiller said, including whether it’s too hot or too cold.

“The turns have be something reasonably negotiable,” he said.

On bicycle courses, French barricades will be put on the parts of the course that have a sharp turn so that there is padding.

“They have a lead motorcyclist and a follow motorcyclist for the media,” Dr. Hiller said.

Dr. Hiller said that if a cyclist goes down the medical committee has to coordinate how to get an ambulance onto the course, so entrance spots are planned so the ambulance is coming in the right direction.

The medical committee makes sure that the athletes have adequate fluids which are known to be safe and they place them in appropriate intervals in the course.

Dr. Hiller said the athletes are the best in the world and often are more focused on the goal instead of their limits.

According to Dr. Hiller, plans for the medical committee are made years in advance, sometimes in four years with several meetings happening with the team. “There’s meetings before once a month for a year before, and once a week for six months before,” he said, are zoom meetings that often have approximately 10 to 30 people on them.

During this year’s Olympic games, Dr. Hiller said that the men’s olympic triathlon was rescheduled because of water quality of the Seine.

According to Dr. Hiller they made that decision the night of Monday, July 29, “It’s been 100 years since people have been allowed to swim in the Seine.”

Dr. Hiller said that there will always be issues and that is why they have a medical committee to oversee the Olympic games.

“It’s been the experience of a lifetime,” Dr. Hiller said, “for me it’s been a honor to help and to help and refine the medical care for this sport.”