Behind Olympic athletes, Olympic doctors

When the Winter Olympics came to Vancouver in 2010, Erik Brand volunteered to direct traffic in front of the Sliding Centre at Whistler.

He met athletes, coaches and fans as he helped steer them through the parking lot toward the venue.

“It was freezing cold, standing on a mountain for 10-hour shifts daily, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything,” said Brand, a native of the Seattle area.

Two years later, in London, Brand is getting a much better glimpse inside the Olympics.

A sports medicine doctor at Swedish Medical Center, he is one of only a few thousand physicians chosen to be part of the games. Roughly 250,000 volunteered. He made the cut after a two-year, 1,500-page application process.

“Let’s just say, they want to be very thorough,” he joked.

Stationed inside the Athletes’ Village Polyclinic, it was his job to tend to any athlete from any country who needed help. While Dr. Brand could not reveal which athletes he worked with, he called it an honor.

“These are some of the highest stakes that exist,” he said.

Brand is familiar with the world of a competitive athlete. He was a member of both the University of Washington and University of Oxford rowing teams.

Previously, he worked with the U.S. rowing team prior to the Junior World Championships and helped to train 25 percent of Australia’s Olympic team before the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Brand is back in the Seattle area for a family wedding, but will return to London for the Paralympics on August 20.