The fine art of sport and exercise medicine

“The field of sport and exercise medicine is about getting people to perform at their best. It’s a challenge and a balancing act which sometimes I get right, and sometimes I don’t,” Professor Wayne Derman, chief medical officer of Team South Africa, told the Absa Jewish Achiever Awards at the Sandton Convention Centre on 19 November.

Derman was awarded the Absa Professional Excellence Award.

Derman, who described himself as humbled and honoured to receive the award, served as chief medical officer for Team South Africa at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the 2004 edition in Athens, before applying for the position at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

“When I got my letter of appointment, I was allocated to be medical officer for the South African paralympic team,” he recalled. It taught him a lot about himself as a human being. “The Paralympics became my passion. I then went on to do service at the International Paralympic Committee, heading up its research to try and make sport a safer endeavour for people with disabilities. I’ve never looked back,” Derman said.

“What the Paralympic work taught me is that ability and disability are part of a continuum. We decide where we want to function each day from a physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional perspective.”

He said one of his most extraordinary experiences was being part of two-time Olympic gold medallist Caster Semenya’s legal and medical defence team. He also feels fortunate to have been part of some of the committees that oversaw the delivery of a safe Olympic Games in Tokyo last year.

“This year has been an incredibly busy one on a national level,” he said. “It has been about the new speciality of sport and exercise medicine, and starting to get universities around South Africa geared up to have a registrar training programme that trains young doctors in this exciting area.”

Derman paid gratitude to his parents for giving him “a wonderful, privileged foundation”. “My mother is with us this evening. My father, unfortunately, passed away this year, but he would be klebbing nachas right now. I would like to thank my beautiful wife for her love, friendship, and support, and putting up with the amount of overworking and travel I do.

“I would like to thank my grandfather, Ted, who, when I was 12, put a doctor’s bag into my hands, and said, ‘My boy, you will be a doctor. In fact, you are going to be a psychiatrist because we have enough pathologists in our family for a whole convention.’ I also would like to thank Elliot Wolf, my principal, who encouraged me to be a doctor even though I was a ‘straight-C’ student at school.”

Derman also thanked his mentor, Professor Asher Dubb from Baragwanath Hospital. “He told me, ‘Wayne, take your passion, sport, and exercise, and combine it into your career – medicine – and you will be very successful.’ And he thanked Professor Tim Noakes, his mentor for many years, and his “wonderful friend” Martin Schwellnus, a professor of sport and exercise medicine at the University of Pretoria, who shared the journey with him.