Dr. Anne Allen
athletic to sail a lot of these boats …
especially the Paralympic sailors.
WBM: When did you know you wanted to be a sports
medicine doctor?
ALLEN: I don’t know if I ever thought this was totally
going to be my
career, but I
do remember
when I was 12
years old and
I was reading
a world record
book, and I
wanted to set a
world record.
I thought, well
maybe that
is not going
Dr. Anne Allen with Muhammad Ali
at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
to happen but I’d like to go to the Olympics as an
athlete. Then I started thinking, well maybe I’m not a
good enough athlete but I’m going to go as a doctor. I
knew that at age 12.
WBM: You were practicing medicine and on staff
at Emory University in Atlanta teaching spine
and sports medicine. When did you begin think-ing
about your passion for sailing from a medical
perspective?
ALLEN: I was on a plane reading an article about
the women’s America’s Cup team and how they
had a trainer who was doing strength training
with them, and then a light bulb went off in my
head — I remember the moment — and I think,
these women and the America’s Cup sailors have
sports injuries like all the other sports athletes and
no one has ever researched or documented it.
So I took the Delta magazine, called the editor,
and asked him how to get ahold of the trainer in the
picture, Dick Dent. I get Dick Dent on the phone,
who eventually said, ‘Well Doc, I just talked to Bill
Koch and basically the only way we can show you how
important it is for you to do this research is to get you
out here on this boat, so how soon can you get here?
I went to the department head at Emory where
I was on faculty and said, ‘I need to go. If you
don’t want to let me go I’m quitting because this
could make or break my career. I’m going to go.’
She said, ‘That’s fine, go.’
The nice thing about working and living in
Atlanta … was I got opportunities to work at very
high levels of sports medicine … and then started
working a lot with the America’s Cup.
I started developing a lot of the sports medicine
and sailing literature based on the research I was
doing. I did that with the Volvo Ocean Race, which
is the around the world race, and got on with the
Olympics and Paralympics when they came to
Atlanta in 1996.
WBM: How did you become involved in the 1996
Olympics and Paralympics?
When I moved to Atlanta I started racing
sailboats … and I had started getting involved in
the Olympics and the Olympic sailing program,
which at the time was in Savannah. I was also
doing the Olympics in Atlanta because I was
covering badminton as well. The organizers of the
Paralympic medical staff came to me and said they
really wanted me to run the medical event venue
at sailing because I sail and because I was a rehab
specialist and understand these disabled athletes.
So I said, ‘Sure,’ and that was the first year sailing
was a full Olympic sport in the Paralympic games.
WBM: What was your role in the Atlanta Olympic
Games?
ALLEN: I was taking care of the Philippine Boxing
Team. One of my colleagues from the Philippines
had called me and said, ‘Our boxing team is our only
hope for a medal. They are coming to Atlanta six
months early. Would you please take care of them?’
That was actually a very difficult time because I
was in the park during the bombing. I was one of
three doctors in the park and it’s not something I
really ever talked about or ever really wanted to go
into. They wanted me on the “Today” show the
next day and I said no. There were people calling
me from around the world saying, ‘Oh my God, we
saw you on CNN International telling the media to
get the hell out of your triage room.’
One of the military guys that came in told me,
‘There’s another bomb, get out!’ And I look at all
these people around me and have to literally say to
Top: US Sailors Jen French and JP Creignou won silver in the SKUD-18, two-person keelboat, during the
2012 Paralympic Games. Bottom: Local sailor Alex Streb, left, and Paralympians Tim Angle and Marc LeBlanc, won
the Robie Pierce One Design Regatta in Rye, New York in 2009.
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WBM may 2013