A Farewell to
the IPC ’s “Head Physician”
Imagine an important meeting about medical issues in sport for athletes with a disability. Suddenly, somebody cracks a joke. Who can that person most likely be? The answer is obvious for everybody who knows the Paralympic Movement: Dr. Michael Riding, Medical Officer of the IPC since its foundation in 1989. Apart from his tremendous knowledge of medical aspects and anti-doping in Paralympic sport, he is known for his unique sense of humor.
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In 1989, Dr. Riding was elected Medical Officer of the IPC and had a huge task in front of him. One year later he reports to the IPC membership of the Medical Committee’s effort “to lay the foundations of structure and regulations”. His main areas of concern were the need to coordinate classification within a sport among different disabilities and among different sports. Doping control was still at its very beginning. Even the fact to have coordinated doping control rules for all sports on the Paralympic program was not agreed on in these early days.
Much has been achieved since then: Doping control has become an integrated part of Paralympic Games and other IPC events. At the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, almost 90 per cent of all athletes were classified prior to their arrival. The MAP process has been success-fully introduced and most importantly, Paralympic Games have become truly sporting events, leaving the rehabilitation model of the early days behind.
Riding, who is originally from England, is the Chief of the Department of Diagnostic Imaging at the IWK Grace Health Center in Halifax, Canada, and Associate Professor at the Department of Radiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “In a world where I seem to be increasingly overwhelmed by sport politics, it is pleasant to be asked to climb into the ivory tower of academics,” Riding once wrote to a colleague from England about the two sides of his professional and volunteer work.
Asked about his motivation for his voluntary work, Riding said in 1996: “I feel that disabled athletes can best be served by involvement in sports according to their maximum ability. I would like to see the integration of disabled and ablebodied athletes at sporting events.”
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Riding’s involvement in sport for athletes with a disability has a much longer history than that of the IPC. In the 1970s, he was a guide for blind runners. As early as 1978, he became the Medical Director of the Canadian Blind Sports Association and two years later, he got
involved in wheelchair sports. He has held a position in the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation since 1982.
Riding’s passion besides his professional and volunteer life is his farm outside Halifax. There, he has lamas watching the sheep and bees producing honey. It had always been Riding’s intention to show the farm to his colleagues from the IPC. Thus, for years, Michael Riding said: “We will have a Medical Committee meeting on the farm and as we will have the best lobster there for dinner; we will call it “The Lobster Meeting”.” Finally, last spring, the Lobster Meeting came to path. It was the last meeting of the Medical Committee under Riding’s leadership. After twelve years of office, he finished his volunteer job as Medical Officer in December. However, he will still carry out his duty as Medical Officer at the Salt Lake City Paralympic Games in March and will use the time until then as a transition period with his successor Björn Hedman.
There is no doubt that his tasks will be carried out as professionally as before by Björn Hedman. However, the style of communication with the IPC colleagues will certainly be different. Jonquil Solt, the IPC Chairperson for Equestrian, for instance, still recalls a letter from Michael Riding, in which he writes to her: “I think the WHO definitions are essentially, what I consider, appropriate for equestrianism (I can’t say riding!)”.
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