IOC Diploma in Sports Physical Therapies

Benjamin Clarsen, Norway

Ben Clarsen is a physiotherapist at the Norwegian Olympic Training Center and a researcher at the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center (OSTRC). He has a bachelor degree in physiotherapy from the University of Sydney, a master degree in sports physiotherapy from the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and a PhD from OSTRC. Ben’s main clinical and research interest is the treatment and prevention of overuse injuries in sport. He is a lecturer on the Norwegian sports physiotherapy master program and on the IOC Advanced Team Physician Course. Ben has 15 years’ experience working with elite athletes, particularly in road cycling where he has been physiotherapist for a number of professional teams, as well as the Norwegian and Australian national programmes. He is a senior associate editor of BJSM and is currently working as the managing editor of the 5th edition of Brukner and Khan’s Clinical Sports Medicine textbook.

Håvard Moksnes, Norway

Håvard Moksnes a research associate at the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center (OSTRC), and a sports physiotherapy clinician at the Norwegian Olympic Training Centre involved in prevention and rehabilitation programs for Olympic athletes. He has been a teacher and supervisor on the Norwegian and Italian master programmes in sports physiotherapy since 2008, and is also consulting clinician for the Norwegian Football Association and the Norwegian Athletics Federation. Håvard trained as a physiotherapist in Oslo and worked 16 years for the private Norwegian Sports Medicine Clinic (Nimi). His research interests are focused around active rehabilitation of lower extremity injuries – primarily knee and hamstring injuries. He defended his PhD thesis on the functional and radiological outcome of a non-operative treatment algorithm for skeletally immature children after ACL injury in 2013, and has written a number of papers on this and adjacent topics. In collaboration with ESSKA he is currently also involved in the initiation of an international paediatric ACL registry.

Ron Maughan, United Kingdom

Ron Maughan obtained his BSc (Physiology) and PhD from the University of Aberdeen, and was based in the Medical School there for almost 25 years before moving to England. He is now Visiting Professor in the School of Medicine at St Andrews University. He spent much of his career trying to understand the physiological and metabolic responses to exercise and the nature of fatigue, but has included many digressions along the way. He chairs the Nutrition Working Group of the Medical and Scientific Commission of the International Olympic Committee. He is a director of the IOC Diploma programs in Sports Nutrition, Sports Medicine, and Sports Physical Therapies. He organised the IOC Consensus Conferences on Nutrition in Sport in 2003 and 2010, the FIFA/F-MARC Consensus Conferences on Nutrition in Football in 2005 and 2011, and the IAAF Consensus Conference on Nutrition in Athletics in 2007. More recently, he organised the 2017 IOC Consensus conference on Dietary Supplements in Elite Sport. He has published extensively in the scientific literature and is author or editor of a number of books on sports nutrition and exercise biochemistry. 

Program Consultant

Lars Engebretsen, Norway

Lars Engebretsen MD PhD is a professor and director of research at the Orthopaedic Center, Ulleval University Hospital and University of Oslo Medical School and Professor and co-chair of the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center. He is also Chief Doctor for the Norwegian Federation of Sports, and headed the medical service at the Norwegian Olympic Center until the autumn of 2011. In 2007 he was appointed Head of Science and Research for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Lars Engebretsen is a specialist in Orthopaedic and general surgery and authorized as Sports Medicine Physician by the Norwegian Society of Sports Medicine. He serves as chief team physician for the Norwegian Olympic teams. The main area of research is resurfacing techniques of cartilage injuries, combined and complex knee ligament injuries and prevention techniques of sports injuries. He is currently the President of ESSKA (European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy). He is the Associate editor and Editor in chief for the new IOC-BJSM journal: Injury Prevention and Health Protection. In addition, he serves on several major sports journal editorial boards and has published more than 200 papers and book chapters.

Susan Shirreffs, UK

Susan Shirreffs has been undertaking research and teaching in the area of exercise physiology and nutrition for more than 20 years. She has published in both peer-reviewed journals and in physiology and nutrition textbooks. 

Mario Bizzini, Switzerland

Dr. Mario Bizzini, PhD, MSc, PT (Switzerland) is as a research associate at the Schulthess Clinic, a private orthopedic and sports medicine center in Zürich. He works there for the FIFA Medical Research and Assessment Center (F-MARC), and the orthopedic and sports medicine departments. His research interests focus on hip and knee rehabilitation in sports, football injuries and sports injury prevention. He has at today 51 peer-reviewed publications, 5 books, and 8 book chapters on these topics, and has lectured at many international congresses. He is a reviewer for various scientific journals, Senior Associate Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy. He is also a specialist in sports physiotherapy (committee member of the Swiss and of the International Federation of Sports Physical Therapy), a rehabilitation consultant for professional ice hockey and football teams, and has worked at three FIFA World Cups (2006, 2010, 2014) and two Olympic Games (2008, 2012).

Jill Cook, Australia

Jill Cook is a Professor in musculoskeletal health in the School of Primary Health Care, Monash University in Australia. Jill’s research areas include sports medicine and tendon injury. After completing her PhD in 2000, she has investigated tendon pathology, treatment options and risk factors for tendon injury. Jill currently supplements her research by conducting a specialist tendon practice and by lecturing and presenting workshops both in Australia and overseas.

Ann Cools, Belgium

Ann Cools is a physiotherapist, working as an associate professor at the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and Physiotherapy at the Ghent University, Belgium. Her topic of research and teaching expertise, as well as her clinical work is shoulder rehabilitation in general, and sport specific approach and scapular involvement in particular. She finished her PhD in 2003, debating scapular involvement in sports related shoulder pain in the overhead athlete, and she has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed international journals, wrote contributions and chapters in several international recognized books, and gives courses on a national and international level. She is at present head of the Physical Therapy Education at the Ghent University, and was founding member and president of the European Society of Shoulder and Elbow Rehabilitation (EUSSER) 2008-2012.

Phil Glasgow, United Kingdom

Philip Glasgow is head of sports medicine at the Sports Institute Northern Ireland. Phil’s doctoral studies investigated factors influencing exercise induced muscle damage and its management. He has extensive experience in high performance sport having worked with elite athletes from a wide range of sports including rugby union, football, hockey, athletics, boxing, sailing, cycling, swimming and squash. He has worked at a number of major International sporting events including the Olympic Games (London 2012 (Team GB); Beijing 2008 (Team Ireland)), Commonwealth Games (Head Physiotherapist Team NI, Delhi 2010; Glasgow 2014) and has been appointed as the Chief Physiotherapy Officer to Team GB for Rio 2016. His particular interests are in the field of functional rehabilitation and in the management of muscle tendon unit injuries. He is currently Vice President of the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Sport and Exercise Medicine (Physios in Sport, UK), having acted for six years as chair for Education and Research. He regularly presents at international conferences on various aspects of sports medicine. Phil is a visiting professor of the School of Sport at Ulster University and teaches on a number of postgraduate sports medicine programmes at various UK and European universities.

Marie-Elaine Grant, Ireland

Dr Marie-Elaine Grant, Ireland’s Olympic Team Lead Physiotherapist from 1990 – 2010, a graduate of UCD (University College Dublin) and a specialist member of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists is the appointed physiotherapist to the International Olympic Committee’s Medical Commission (Games Group).  As lead physiotherapist to the Olympic Council of Ireland she has been appointed to the Irish Olympic Team for 5 consecutive Summer Olympic Games commencing with Barcelona 1992 through to Beijing 2008 and also served with the Irish Winter Olympic Team in Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010 and was appointed to 10 Irish European Youth Olympic Squads. In 2011 Marie-Elaine was appointed to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Medical Commission Games Group, as a clinical expert in sports physiotherapy, in this role Marie-Elaine has worked at the London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Olympic Games. She is responsible for monitoring physiotherapy activities and facilities for all participating nations and is the main contact person for the IOC for all issues related to Games time physiotherapy and physical therapies. Marie-Elaine was awarded Specialist Membership of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists in 2006 which has been renewed in 2013 for a second term, in recognition of expertise in Sports Physiotherapy. She is an associate member of the UCD Institute of Sports and Health and commissioned their Elite Athlete Academy physiotherapy service. She is involved in extensive clinical practice providing specialist sports physiotherapy for recreational to high performance athletes. She has chaired the CPSEM (Chartered Society of Physiotherapists in Sports Medicine) accreditation board, and was actively involved in commissioning sports physiotherapy accreditation in Ireland. Marie-Elaine lectures on third level BSc Physiotherapy programmes and post-graduate MSc programmes in Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy.  She tutors final year physiotherapy students on clinical placements and mentors post graduates in the field of sports physiotherapy. Marie-Elaine continues to participate in clinical research. She has peer reviewed publications in leading sports medicine and physiotherapy journals.

Karim Khan, Qatar

Professor Karim Khan, MD, PhD, FASCM, is a Canadian sports physician and academic who is an advocate of physical activity for its public health benefit. His research focused on activity for bone health and falls prevention particularly in the aging demographic. Professor Khan was also a major contributor to the paradigm shift that ‘tendinopathies’ are not inflammatory conditions and this led to physicians appreciating the need for active exercise as treatment – the concept of ‘mechanotherapy’. He is a founding investigator in the $40 million research enterprise at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health called the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility. Here over 100 investigators collaborate to improve the health of Canadians across the lifespan by improving their mobility and promoting physical activity. Karim is the editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine – a strong supporter of ACSM`s Exercise is Medicine initiative. He is also an author of Brukner & Khan’sClinical Sports Medicine (4th edition), a textbook that that helped many clinicians in their residencies and fellowships. He practices what he preaches and accumulates a total of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical daily.

Michael P Reiman, USA

Michael is an assistant professor of physical therapy at Duke University Medical Center. As a clinician Mike has over 20 years of experience in assessing, rehabilitating, and training athletes, clients, and patients at various levels of ability. In addition to his certifications as an athletic trainer and strength and conditioning specialist, Mike is a manual therapy fellow through the American Academy of Orthopaedic and Manual Physical Therapists, is a USA Weightlifting level 1 coach and a USA Track and Field level 1 coach. Mike has co-written the only textbook on functional testing, Functional Testing in Human Performance, is currently writing an Orthopaedic Examination text, and has written 12 book chapters on orthopedic examination/intervention and sport-related training.  He has also written over 40 peer-reviewed articles, currently serves on the editorial board for, and is a reviewer for multiple sports and orthopedic related journals. He continues to practice clinically on various sports and orthopedic hip and spine-related injuries.

Kristian Thorborg, Denmark

Kristian Thorborg has been a specialist in sports physiotherapy and musculoskeletal physiotherapy since 2004, and is an Associate Professor at the Copenhagen University. He has published more than 50 peer reviewed articles and 20 book chapters. He has been lecturing at the Copenhagen University since 2009, and has been an invited speaker at more than 50 national and international conferences. Prof Thorborg was the Editor In Chief for the journal of Danish Sports Medicine from 2007-10 and Chairman for the Revision of National Clinical Specialization in Physiotherapy in Denmark (2010-11). Prof. Thorborg works as a researcher at the Sports Orthopedic Research Center – Copenhagen and Physical Medicine Rehabilitation – Copenhagen (PMR-C), which are both part of the Copenhagen IOC Research Centre. Prof. Thorborg also still sees patients, as well as doing consultancy.

Evert Verhagen, Netherlands

Evert Verhagen (1976) is a human movement scientist and epidemiologist. He holds a University Research Chair as a full professor at the Department of Public and Occupational Health of the Amsterdam UMC and the Amsterdam Movement Science Research Institute. He is the director of the Amsterdam Collaboration on Health and Safety in Sports (one of the 11 IOC research centers) and director of the Amsterdam Institute of Sports Sciences (AISS). His research revolves around the prevention of sports and physical activity related injuries; including monitoring, cost-effectiveness and implementation issues. He supervises several (inter-)national PhDs and post-docs and has (co-) authored over 240 peer-reviewed publications around these topics.