McMaster physician treating Olympic boxers
Kien Trinh is part of medical team for Rio matches
While Canada’s athletes duke it out for the gold, behind the scenes, Canadian volunteers are working hard to make the Rio spectacle possible.
Dr. Kien Trinh, a clinical professor of family medicine at McMaster, is one such volunteer. The medical director of Boxing Canada will serve as a field of play physician at the Rio Olympics, where he’ll be stitching up battered boxers, assessing concussions and conducting pre-match physicals.
The first bell rings Saturday at 10 a.m. EST, while the final bout will be held Aug. 21.
“It does get pretty hectic,” Trinh said Friday in a phone interview from Rio.
Trinh and the two or three other field of play physicians will have to do a medical exam of every boxer before the games start.
The following day-to-day schedule probably won’t allow for much sightseeing of Rio:
His day will typically start with about two hours of pre-match physicals, followed by breakfast, a medical team meeting, midday fights, dinner, another meeting, evening fights and a final team meeting to discuss the day’s events.
In all his years of working with athletes at Pan Am and Olympic Games, Trinh is grateful to have witnessed stunning performances from the top amateur boxers in the world, but his most memorable medical moment came when he helped a boxing spectator who’d fallen through his chair at the 2008 Beijing Games.
“He was in quite a bit of pain,” from a possible fracture, said Trinh, but local Chinese doctors weren’t able to communicate with the injured American. The doctors paged Trinh, and he remembers the utter relief the American felt when a doctor from “home” – even if it was neighbouring Canada – arrived at his side.
Perhaps more challenging than dealing with language barriers between physicians and athletes is adapting to the different medical approaches athletes from other parts of the world expect, Trinh said.
“For me, I look at this as a learning opportunity,” he said. “(In Canada) we might use one technique to stitch up an athlete, while other doctors use techniques that are completely different, but the results are also pretty good.”
A proper stitching, which is robust and minimizes “aesthetic impact,” can take 45 minutes to an hour, he said.
Like anything, changes in the sport require Trinh to stay on top of regulatory changes. When he started, doping practices prohibited the use of local anesthetics for injuries and Norepinephrine to stop bleeding – both of which are now allowed.
Similarly, in the ever-evolving world of concussion treatment, Trinh says the chief medical officer will have to decide which of the modern concussion protocols physicians will have to follow.
“I’m not here to just treat Canadian athletes, but, as a proud Canadian, I feel this is a good contribution for Canada,” Trinh said.
At these games, Trinh tips his hand to 21-year-old Arthur Biyarslanov of Toronto as having a chance to surprise – which he did against strong Cuban competition when he won gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games. Mandy Bujold, 29, of Kitchener, also won gold for Canada at those games.
But for Trinh, the real reason for volunteering is interacting with the athletes and physicians he meets – typically keeping in touch long after the events.