Dr. David Geier - Thats Gotta Hurt: The Injuries That Changed Sports Forever

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. David Geier is an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist who provides education and commentary on sports and exercise injuries to athletes and active people to help them stay healthy and perform their best.

After spending eight years serving as director of sports medicine at an academic medical center, he left to start his own practice. He currently serves as medical director of sports medicine at a private hospital outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He holds a board certification from the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery in orthopaedic surgery as well as a subspecialty certification in orthopaedic sports medicine.

Currently he serves as the Communications Council chair for the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) Board of Directors. He also serves as chairman of the publications committee for AOSSM. He serves on the outreach committee for the STOP Sports Injuries campaign and the medical aspects of sports committee for the South Carolina Medical Association. He has previously served as the chairman of the public relations committee for AOSSM and as a member of the sports medicine evaluation committee for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

He started writing articles on his websiteDrDavidGeier.comin August 2010 as a hobby. His goal at the time was simple: to share sports medicine and wellness information in easy-to-understand language for athletes, parents, coaches, and other health-care providers.

What he never expected to find back in 2010 was a passion for communicating this information. Despite long hours in clinic and surgery, he is still excited to open his laptop and write. He now writes a regular column for the daily Charleston newspaper, The Post and Courier. He records videos every week answering questions from his audience, and he produces a weekly sports medicine podcast. He also created a networking and educational site for health-care professionals who work with athletes and active people, Sports Medicine University. As of this writing, over 200,000 unique visitors come to his website every month.

For more information about Dr. Geier, or for more information on sports and exercise injuries and injury treatments and prevention, check out DrDavidGeier.com and his Sports Medicine Simplified online courses.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My father actually came up with the idea for this book. He sent me a text message one night saying that I should write a book and call it Thats Gotta Hurt: The Injuries That Changed Sports Forever. He offered Joan Benoit, Bernard King, and Dave Duerson as examples of athletes whose injuries and injury treatments have changed their sports and the treatment of athletes of all ages. After a few more hours of texting, we had almost the entire list of athletes I discuss in this book.

In fact, he insisted I use the Wide World of Sports opening montage, with Vinko Bogataj crashing at the base of a ski jump, as my introduction. While I remembered watching the show almost every Saturday afternoon as a kid, I couldnt figure out how the agony of defeat would apply to what I wanted to write. After researching the crash and learning the effects that footage had on the sport of ski jumping, I had my introduction. As always, my dads instincts were right.

He has been more helpful through this process than I can ever describe. He has read multiple drafts of every chapter. He convinced me to stick with my message when agents and publishers wanted a more prescriptive medical book. I could not have written this book without his time, wisdom, support, and love.

Much of the information on the injuries I describe came from hundreds of hours of research in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. I could not have told these stories and explained their significance, though, without the insight and experiences of people close to the events. So many people selflessly gave their valuable time to talk to me, and I could not be more grateful to them.

Among the athletes and their coaches, teams, and family, I am deeply appreciative of Sam Bowie, Rory Bushfield, Brandi Chastain, Michael Duerson, Max Eisenbud, Bob Sevene, Bill Walton, and Gregg Williams. I am also thankful for the time and insight shared by many journalists and experts in their fields, including Ken Anderson, Timothy Epstein, Andrea Kremer, Mike Oliver, Alan Schwarz, and Doug Wilson.

In writing this book, I relied on the knowledge and research of a huge number of physicians, health-care professionals, and medical experts who graciously offered their time and perspectives. Many thanks to Barry Boden, James Bradley, Peter Brukner, Lyle Cain, Robert Cantu, Douglas Casa, Lindsay DiStefano, Julie Eibensteiner, Gary Green, Glenn Fleisig, Tom Hackett, Jo Hannafin, Tim Hewett, Barry Jordan, Steve Lombardo, Bert Mandelbaum, Matt Matava, Chris Mazou, Ann McKee, Jordan Metzl, Fred Mueller, Norman Scott, Erin Shannon, Donald Shelbourne, Holly Silvers, Robert Stern, Herb Stevenson, Jeff Stotts, Dania Sweitzer, and Vehniah Tjong.

I cannot say enough about Dana Newman, my amazing literary agent. Many publishers wanted me to write a prescriptive book, suggesting what readers could do for a rotator cuff tear or meniscus tear. This is the book that I wanted to write. She understood it immediately and supported it completely.

Thank you to Stephen Hull and the team at ForeEdge and University Press of New England. You are all great at what you do, and you were a pleasure to work with.

Thank you to Erik Calonius for reading and helping me craft my book proposal, reading my initial chapters, and offering much-needed encouragement.

I am indebted to my longtime assistant, Jen Streckfuss. She tracked down contact information for people I wanted to interview and helped assemble the citations for the hundreds of sources I used. In addition, she helped with many of the daily functions of my website, podcast, videos, and Sports Medicine University so that I could devote much of my limited free time to this book.

Along the same lines, thank you to Stephanie Coffin for her help with both this book and my website and social media. And thank you to Prateek Prasanna for letting me bounce ideas about injuries and injury trends off him.

Malcolm Dewitt, the sports editor at The Post and Courier, offered me my first real opportunity to write for an audience outside of my website. I started by writing what he and I thought readers in Charleston would want to read from an orthopedic surgeon: explanations of injuries among local athletes. Honestly, my first few columns were not good at all. Malcolm stuck with me as I worked to improve. Gradually he allowed me to expand my column to discuss my passions: arguments for rule changes in sports and ways to make sports safer. Those passions largely shaped the theme of this book.

Thank you to Heather Woolwine and Tony Ciuffo for encouraging me to write that newspaper column and promote those messages online and in the media.

Special thanks go out to Joy Groblebe and Brian Scheer, who have helped me build my platform and encouraged me to share my message with audiences across the world, and to Roger Love, who has helped me improve the delivery of that message.

I am deeply grateful to Jenny Blake, who has coached me through this process from beginning to end. She guided me through the roller coaster of emotions of trying to get an agent and publisher and writing chapters on weekends after long weeks of clinics and surgeries. Her encouragement and wisdom even helped me restart my writing after I gave up after only three chapters. I could not have completed this book without her.