THE medical personnel were kept busy on yesterday’s second day of the 100th staging of the ISSA GraceKennedy Boys’ Athletics Championships, dealing with more than 50 injured athletes.

Veteran sports medicine doctor Winston Dawes told the Observer the number of injured athletes were unprecedented.

“It’s one of the heaviest (second) days that we have had. We saw several sprinters with a lot of hamstring injuries,” Dr Dawes said. “To give a ball park I would say (we saw) 50-odd (injured) athletes,” he disclosed.

A number of medal favourites were among the athletes, who were bit by the injury bug. They included sprinters Earl Lee of Calabar (hamstring), Khorey Spalding (hamstring) of St Georges’ College and Kimarly Henry (hamstring) of Kingston College, who all went down in the Class One 100m.

“The unfortunate thing is that some of them came to Champs with injuries, which knowing the kind of pressure they would be under, it was advisable for them not to run,” he added.

“They have a bright future ahead of them and trying to force them through with a hamstring injury that is not fully healed is dangerous,” Dr Dawes said.

The injuries were not restricted to sprinters as athletes in the middle-distance races and the jumping events were also stretchered to the sick bay, which was being manned by four doctors and 12 physiotherapists yesterday.

“(The injuries) were mostly hamstrings; we had a few shin-splints and probably one acute shin-splint that we had to send for X-ray to make sure there was no fracture; there was one girl who damaged her knee doing long jump.

“People came in with three-month history of injured toe and trying to sprint and ran into problems,” Dr Dawes added, noting that they also saw athletes with fresh injuries sustained in the meet.

“Going forward, I think that anybody who has minor injuries should err on the side of caution and not run. There is no point at 14 or 15 (years old) putting an athlete through injury to damage them for their future,” he added.