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doi:10.1016/j.pt

Physical Therapy in Sport 9 (2008) 55–56

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Editorial

Beijing 2008 beckons—let the politics begin

The 2008 Olympic Games are just around the corner,and another 4-year cycle is about to come to a peak. Asthe Olympic hype starts to ramp up, so does theassociated media reporting and, inevitably controversialissues will be raised. Politics has always been inextric-ably linked with sport. The Chinese boycotted theOlympic Games from 1956 until the winter Games in1980 in protest of the IOC decision to recognise Taiwan.Additionally, in the 1956 Melbourne games, Switzer-land, Spain and the Netherlands boycotted because ofthe Soviet crackdown in Hungary. Egypt, Iraq andLebanon also stayed away in protest of Israel’s invasionof the Sinai Peninsula. In the Montreal Games of ‘76, 26countries boycotted the Games in protest at theinclusion of New Zealand, whose rugby union sidehad recently played against South Africa, a nation thathad been banned from competing at Olympic Gamessince 1964. The height of the cold war saw the USAteam boycott Moscow in 1980. These are just a few ofmany examples that litter the history of ‘the greatestshow on earth’. When China was awarded the 2008Games back in 2001 there was debate, certainly in theBritish media, whether China deserved this world showcase given their human rights record at that time. Sincethis announcement, all has been relatively quiet, untilnow. There have been no announcements of boycottsyet at the time of writing this. However, the BritishOlympic Authority has recently been criticised in anattempt to make their athletes sign a gagging clausepreventing them from talking on political issues. Thishas since been revoked. Also this week, the film directorSteven Spielberg has withdrawn from his position asartistic adviser to the 2008 Games in protest of China’spolicy on the conflict in Darfur.

I hope these recent incidents do not indicate the tip ofthe iceberg. Looking back at some of the previousexamples of boycotts and protests, the world has sincemoved on, and I would suggest that no boycott has beenpivotal in bringing about this change. Sport has theamazing capacity to unite athletes and nations and bringthem together. Sport also has the capacity to transcendall political and religious issues. Athletes and theirsupport teams have been working for 4 years for an

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event that will, for many, be the pinnacle in their careers.Whilst politicians may want to hijack a prestigious eventsuch as the Olympic Games for their own political ends,most athletes will just want to arrive in Beijing fit andhealthy and ready to put in the performance of theirlives. No more, no less.

Good luck to all those athletes taking part and notforgetting the teams behind them—enjoy Beijing.

Onto this issue, many outcome scores currently existfor the evaluation of foot and ankle pain. In this issue,Eechaute and co-workers describe the development andclinimetric properties of a new questionnaire, the ChronicAnkle Instability Scale (CAIS), designed specifically forthe evaluation of this clinical entity. Some readers maynot be familiar with the term ‘clinimetric’, indeed, youwill not find it in the dictionary or indexed in Wikipedia.Feinstein first coined this phrase in 1982 and defined theterm as ‘the domain concerned with indexes, rating scalesand other expressions that are used to describe ormeasure symptoms, physical signs, and other distinctlyclinical phenomena in clinical medicine’. The test–retestreliability, content validity and internal consistency of thenew scale are reported, and the authors conclude that theCAIS is a valid and reliable instrument to assess subjectswith this condition. Herrington and colleagues present areport on the effect of a repeated tackling task on theshoulder joint position sense (JPS) in a group ofprofessional rugby union players. Interestingly, a reduc-tion in joint position sense was found but only at theouter range. Any joint, and specifically the shoulder joint,is more at risk from injury at the outer range, and if theJPS is affected following fatigue, this may further increasethe injury risk.

The relationship between available passive hip rota-tion and the presence of low back pain (LBP) in sportsrequiring rotational movement of the trunk and hips,such as racquetball and tennis, continues to be ofinterest to clinicians. Van Dillen and colleagues inves-tigated 24 subjects with, and 24 subjects without LBPand the former demonstrated less total hip rotation andmore asymmetry, with the left hip being more restrictedthan the right. Much has been written on the incidenceof LBP in elite male cricket fast bowlers, however little

ARTICLE IN PRESSEditorial / Physical Therapy in Sport 9 (2008) 55–5656

has been written on their female counterparts. Stuelckenand colleagues reported 54% of the 26 female bowlersincluded in this study had a history of LBP. No bowlerreported being out of cricket for more than 4 weeks withan acute episode, and this would suggest that acutelumbar stress injuries suffered in male bowlers are notprevalent in this group. Additionally, a significantdifference in lumbar lateral flexion range of motionwas reported to the bowling arm side between thosefemale fast bowlers with and without a history of LBP.In the penultimate article of this issue Whatman andcolleagues investigated the effect of 3 different proto-cols, namely hamstring stretches, hamstring vibration,and a combination of stretches and vibration ondynamic knee range of movement and jump perfor-mance in a small group of healthy male participants.None of the protocols had an effect on jump perfor-mance, however, the stretching protocol did have a

small, but short-lived effect on knee range of movement.Finally, Button and colleagues present some originalresearch evaluating specific kinematic variables incopers and non-copers following ACL rupture. Inter-estingly, mean knee angle was still significantly greaterat 4 months in the non-coping group, and had failed torecover to the same extent as knee flexion angle in thecoping group.

That concludes the original research for this issue,don’t forget to read the reviews on the latest books andthe diary of forthcoming events at the end. Any readerswishing to add to the diary events are welcome to e-mailthese to the editor. We hope you enjoy this issue ofPhysical Therapy in Sport.

Editor

Zoe Hudson