Bauerfeind at the Olympic Winter Games 2006
"A building block of medical care", 02/08/2006
Bauerfeind AG, one of the foremost manufacturers of compression stockings, braces, orthoses, orthopedic insoles and prostheses, is right on site supporting the German Olympic teams in their preparations and during the XX Olympic Winter Games in Turin in 2006. Our orthopedic care team is available round the clock to the athletes, team physicians, physical therapists and counsellors both in the Medical Zone of the German Pavilion and where the competitions take place.
Since 2001, Bauerfeind has been supporting the team of physicians and physical therapists of the German Olympic teams in providing medical care for top athletes. Professor Dr. med. Wilfried Kindermann, the senior team physician in Athens, called Bauerfeind a "building block in the network of medical care".
Just like at the Olympic Summer Games in Athens, Bauerfeind will also be offering its orthopedic services and physical therapy in Turin in its own medical zone at the German Pavilion. Our team – Bauerfeind’s orthopedic technicians and physical therapists – is also on call whenever needed right where the competitions take place.
If acute medical care is required, the IOC Guideline states that both the organiser and the participating countries have to make sure that fast help is available where it is needed, athletes are given expert primary care and injured persons can be transported quickly to the right shelter. The topographic and infrastructural situation at these Winter Games does not make it easy to meet these demands and that is why immediate assistance is so important. Dr. Volker Jägemann, who has been the senior first-aid physician of the German Bobsledding Association since 1999, explains the procedure: "If acute medical care is required, we access the medicine already ordered ahead of time as a precaution or ordered from the German Olympic Chemist's Shop". If braces or orthoses are needed for therapy and have to be adapted by experts, he takes advantage of the orthopedic service that Bauerfeind offers round the clock in the German Pavilion in Sestriere and if necessary where the competitions are carried out.
The Bauerfeind Service Team got its initial experience in orthopedic care for the athletes at the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002. There, more than 30 athletes including ski jumpers, bob sledders, speed skaters and ice hockey players were supplied with orthopedic aids such as braces and orthoses either prophylactically or as therapy if they were injured. For most athletes, that means they do not have to give up their dream of winning Olympic gold or silver. "After all," comments Bauerfeind's CEO Thomas Bauerfeind, "that is why every athlete trains in her or his active career". Last year, he signed the contract with “Deutsche Sportmarketing”, the marketing agency of the National Olympic Committee, for extending co-partnership to the Olympic Summer Games 2008 in Beijing.
