Information about a piece of news titled Preventing illness gives results
Preventing illness gives results
Intoduction
Ahead of, and under, The Olympic Games in Vancouver 2010 the Norwegian team focused especially on preventing illness. A lot fewer got sick in Canada compared to the games in Turin four years earlier.
A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that preventing illness was very effective for the Norwegian Olympic Team.
The aim of the study was to document the effect of the prevention programme (1), to compare the occurrence of illness in Vancouver 2010 to that of Turin 2006 (2) and to compare the occurrence of illness in the Norwegian Olympic Team to that of the other competing nations in Vancouver 2010.
More athletes, less illness
The illness rate in Vancouver was 5.1 percent (five of 99 athletes) compared with 17.3 percent (13 of 75 athletes) in Turin.
A total of four athletes missed one competition during the Vancouver Games owing to illness, compared with eight in Turin.
The average illness rate for all nations in the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games was 7.2 percent, 2.1 percentage points more than in the Norwegian team.
The programme can have an effect
The researchers behind the study underline that the results of implementing the preventive measures (before and during the 2010 OWG) does not show a definite cause-and-effect link with the prevalence of illness.
Still, the reduced illness rate compared with the 2006 OWG, and the low prevalence of illnesses compared with other nations in the Vancouver OWG suggest that the preparations were effective.
Read the whole article as published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine here (pdf).
The study was led by Dag Vidar Hanstad (Department of Cultural and Social Studies, Norwegian School of Sports Sciences) and conducted in cooperation with Ola Rønsen, Svein S. Andersen, Kathrin Steffen og Lars Engbretsen.