Time at treatment table becomes happy second chapter for boy who was born to run

All athletes are not created equal. You don’t need to be Charles Darwin to understand that but you probably do need a degree in physiotherapy to understand that all injured athletes are not to be treated equally.

David Campbell was 17 when his grandmother showed him a newspaper article under the headline “The man with the healing hands”. He’d been all around the country, seeing doctors, physiotherapists, self-proclaimed sports injury specialists, who’d all advised him that his knee injury was probably chronic, and Campbell should give up. Not many athletes like to be told that, especially when they’re 17.

The man with the healing hands was Ger Hartmann, who’d earned cult-like status treating injured athletes. For Campbell, the article was a last beacon of hope, and John, his father and coach, effectively hounded Hartmann’s clinic in Limerick until he agreed to see the young man. It was 1999, and Campbell’s heart was set on becoming an international athlete. He’d always felt like he was born to run, especially over 800 metres, and a life without running was impossible to fathom.

What Campbell discovered in Limerick that day was a sort of holistic revelation: Hartmann – who is a physical therapist by the way, not a physiotherapist – convinced Campbell he’d be back running in six months. He treated not just the injury, but also its source, making sure Campbell understood it, too.

Fifth fastest

A year later, Campbell qualified for the European Junior Championships, and with that began a 12-year career that saw him run 1:45.59, the fifth fastest Irishman in history (faster than Marcus O’Sullivan, for example).

It wasn’t always smooth running. Campbell turned down a couple of US scholarships and attended NUI Maynooth, close to where he lived in Kilcock, to study business and finance, thinking that would serve him better in the long run. He also took a part-time weekend course in massage therapy, keen to understand the cause and recovery processes of sports injury.

He suffered plenty more injuries , and in 2006 was on the verge of quitting before he clocked 1:46.99 to qualify for the European Championships in Gothenburg. In 2007, the possibilities still beginning to shine, Campbell won a national 800m/1,500m double – the first person to do so since Eamonn Coghlan in 1981. Then, after missing out on the Beijing Olympics (in the 800m B-standard) he began to look beyond the horizon. He could choose a career in finance or a vocation in sports injury. There was only one winner.

But if Campbell found the sports injury business to be a jungle back in 1999, it was now even more so. The truth is anyone can go around calling themselves a “physio”.

Yet there is an important difference not just between a physical therapist and a physiotherapist, but more importantly between a massage therapist, a neuromuscular therapist and other such massage therapy, including acupressure, aromatherapy and shiatsu, and not forgetting craniosacral therapy, polarity therapy, and indeed the certified athletic trainer.

Right now the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, as well as the Irish Association of Physical Therapists, are campaigning for legislation to give legal definition, and protection, to their profession.

Full-time degree

Only chartered physiotherapists, who require a four-year full-time degree, are entitled to work in the public sector, although in reality the entire profession is still in its infancy: physiotherapy has only been a degree course in Ireland since 1987, and it was only earlier this year that the Irish Physiotherapist Registration Board was established.

There is still a long way to go before some of the confusion is cleared up, or some of the quacks are cleared out, although that’s not saying physiotherapy will ever be a strict profession. Any medical or healing practice is only as good as the person delivering it, and Campbell, now 32, believes his UCD degree in physiotherapy provides the most valuable foundation.

Sonia O’Sullivan was among the athletes to write up his recommendation, as he’d already been treating some of the athletes in the training group of her husband, Nic Bideau. Back in 2009, when wintering in Australia, Campbell also treated a then unknown Kenyan named David Rudisha, and early last year, he spent a month in Morocco looking after Rob Heffernan, before he went on to win his World 50km walk title.

This is just some of the experience Campbell plans to bring to his new vocation, having graduated in May. To operate at the highest level of physiotherapy he felt he needed the highest qualification, although that doesn’t mean he dismisses the lesser ones. “I’m just trying to be what I’d have liked someone to be, when I came to see them, at age 17,” he says.

All of which helps explain why later today, at the University of Limerick, he will deliver his first sports-performance workshops with Hartmann, who has employed Campbell as his apprentice, and possibly even his successor.