Alpine ski doctor shares her experience of serving Beijing 2022

Q: What makes your job difficult?

Che Lu: Alpine ski is not a sport for the faint-hearted. The 2022 Winter Olympics witnessed a total of eight major injuries in alpine ski events, including three cases that required immediate surgical interventions.

It is even more dangerous for Para athletes. Unlike able-bodied athletes who are at prime of life without any medical condition to begin with, illness is common among Para athletes, mostly due to infections (respiratory, skin, or urinary tract). Therefore, we must be fully prepared and deliver our best effort to provide a safe racing environment.

We prepared a 15kg trauma bag to carry the basic life-saving equipment, including airway support equipment, splints, and oxygen tank. During rescue, time is everything. We need to get to the injured racer through steep and icy terrain, and give rapid assessment and basic treatments such as analgesia and splinting before our fingers lose dexterity in the cold weather.

Then if considered necessary, the injured racer will be transferred through toboggan or rescue helicopter. All these movements are ideally to be finished within 15 minutes.

When your "office" is located on steep slope with an average temperature of minus 20 C and strong wind is blowing into your face, it is surely not a comfortable environment.

However, knowing that solid medical service is the cornerstone of Winter Olympic and Paralympic motivates me to do my best when athletes standing at the top of the mountain are about to race down.

Q: What is your overall impression of serving Beijing 2022?

Che Lu: I feel very honored to be part of the medical service for Beijing 2022 and I believe my teammates feel the same.

Although getting injured is an unfortunate incident for the athletes, hopefully our service reassurances them that they will be back in action soon even if they do get injured.