The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced four years of funding for clinical, educational and research expertise in elite sports for the University of Ballarat Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion.

Announced today at the Be Active ’09 Conference in Brisbane, this is one of only four worldwide partnerships the IOC has established with various research centres in order to support research in the field of sports medicine.

University of Ballarat researcher, and head of the new IOC-funded research centre, Professor Caroline Finch says this grant places the University of Ballarat Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion as one of the top centres of excellence internationally.

“This grant represents significant international recognition of the excellence of the sports injury/sports medicine research achievements we have made in Australia,” said Professor Finch.

“Research on sports injury and disease prevention in athletes is scarce, and only a handful of intervention studies looking at the effect of prevention programs are available.

“We have very little information about what works to prevent sports injuries and why. The new IOC-funded research centre will undertake research that will take the latest sports injury prevention advances for elite athletes and apply this knowledge for the safety of everyone who plays sport.

“A concerted long-term research effort on risk factors, injury mechanisms and prevention programs is definitely required to make sport safe for all,” said Professor Finch.

Whilst being led by the University of Ballarat, the new IOC-funded research centre also involves leading sports medicine researchers from two other Melbourne-based universities (Deakin University and the University of Melbourne), and the application to the IOC had the strong support of the Australian Olympic Committee and a number of the national peak sports bodies including Basketball Australia, Cricket Australia, the Australian Football League, Football Federation Australia and Australian Rugby Union.

“The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) Medical Commission is very aware of the importance of injury prevention and is delighted that the IOC is supporting this research,” said Chairman of the AOC Medical Commission, Dr Brian Sando.

“Such research can identify the cause of injuries which may occur in training or competition and so lead to preventive measures which will ultimately benefit elite athletes and sportspersons at all levels worldwide,” said Dr Sando.

The full list of supported centres includes:

• UCT/MRC Research Unit of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM), University of Cape Town, South Africa.
• Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center, Norway.
• Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (CIPSP), University of Ballarat, Australia.

Sports Medicine Australia Release