Sports Medicine Australia

This commemorative issue of Sport Health was commissioned by Sports Medicine Australia to explore how this medical speciality came to be what it is today. 

It tells the story of the early European influence on sports medicine in Australia. During the 1940s and 1950s the first generation of Australian practitioners were those who volunteered their passion and interest in the decades leading up to the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. They were joined by the second generation who, also voluntarily, founded the Australian Sports Medicine Federation, laid the groundwork, and established the guidelines for sports medicine in this country. The third generation have since built on these foundations to take sports medicine into the modern era as a recognised medical specialty.