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The nutrition division
At time of writing I am based at the Australian Institute of Sport European Training Centre (ETC) in Gavirate, Northern Italy. The ETC has accommodation for 50 athletes, and during the peak European summer competition phase the adjacent hotel will also be fully occupied with over 100 Australian athletes being accommodated, trained and fed at this northern outpost of Australian high-performance sport. The athletes are in preparation for high-level competition in Europe across a range of sports including rowing, cycling, sailing and canoeing/kayaking. With important competition imminent, the focus on food is intense, from the nutritional perspective and also from a health/hygiene perspective. Rowing Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport place a heavy emphasis on ‘food first’, with use of sports supplements being restricted to very specific circumstances in high-performance athletes, under the supervision of appropriately trained Sport and Exercise Medicine (SEM) Physicians and Sports Nutritionists.
One of the stimulating and challenging features of practising SEM is that I often review a subject of which I thought I had a good understanding, only to discover that the literature is inconclusive or a matter of conjecture. One of the key ingredients for improving understanding and knowledge on any topic is robust and open debate. My first foray into SEM was in 1990 when I started the Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Medicine, then based at the London Hospital in Whitechapel. The accepted wisdom in many areas of SEM has altered a great deal since 1990. A change in thinking …