Coronavirus pandemic: Sporting Life

On medical front lines, athletes do a tour of duty

PHOTO: COURTESY OF ATIQ SYAZWANI ROSLAN

As he lay dying in Belgium in 1917, Captain Noel Chavasse dictated a letter to his fiancee. In 1908 he'd run the 400 metres at the Olympics and now as a doctor in World War I would become one of a handful of men to win two Victoria Crosses. He would die of his wounds at 32, but not before he told the nurse to write these words: "Duty called and called me to obey."

Duty propels some athletes, it has taken them to war, and now, in a time of Covid-19, it draws them to a new front line. Duty has led Atiq Syazwani Roslan, a physiotherapist and Singapore silat exponent, to exchange a competition uniform for a PPE at worker dormitories; it has taken a local hurdler, Dr Ang Chen Xiang, 25, from the track to the emergency department. And they are not alone.

These are people in medicine and so healing is their job and yet some are volunteering for specific roles that might put them in closer reach of the virus. As athletes, whose bodies are their instruments, there is an in-built instinct for self-preservation and yet as medical practitioners their inclination is to step forward. Duty isn't just a legal obligation, says the online dictionary but also a moral one.

Across the planet, without fanfare, stories are emerging of athletes joining the global scrap. Maxime Mbanda is an Italian rugby player and a surgeon's son who volunteered as an ambulance driver. Jo Brigden-Jones, an Australian kayaker, is doing land work as a paramedic. Dorra Mahfoudhi, a Tunisian pole vaulter and fifth-year medical student, is helping her nation's Covid-19 task force.

This is not remarkable and yet it is meaningful because duty always has a heft to it. Sport breeds a certain selfishness because it is primarily about standing out and apart. Athletes, in a way, have to be self-absorbed, single-mindedly consumed by their weight, diet, sleep, improvement, and it makes for a "me-first" world.

But like war, this pandemic asks for everyone to weigh in, to put self-interest aside, to recognise the greater good. And when athletes arrive on the front line, when they insert swabs into nostrils and tend to their fellow citizens, they reiterate that. They are serving the very community which cheers them.

We often see athletes as entitled even if it is a small, if significant, minority. Nevertheless, an athlete in a white coat, her spikes exchanged for stethoscope, powerfully refutes any idea of privilege. It is a symbolism which matters in such a time. As stories emerge of occasional athletes breaking social distancing and lockdown rules, and of self-indulgent scraps in sporting leagues over pay cuts, these athletes give sport a shine.

For athletes, who often speak of stepping out of their comfort zone, the pandemic is a tutorial in precisely that. This fight is bigger than anything they know. As an arena right now, the hospital is unrivalled in its intensity and athletes will be grateful for any lessons they might carry from field to clinic.

As the kayaker-paramedic Brigden-Jones said in an interview, the similarities between both professions are evident "because there are a lot of situations where you need to perform under pressure". Without stretching the parallel too far, sport has virtues which can be of value in medicine: calmness amid chaos, stamina, decision-making, patience.

But sport is mostly a joyous activity, where "battle" is an exaggerated idea and no one goes home in body bags. If one word separates these professions then it is in how they interpret "loss". Defeat is not dying. Once this pandemic passes, the athlete-doctors will be left with many things, including a fresh perspective. Sport will be the same and yet, for some, forever different.

In a story so legendary it is mentioned even on his biographical page in the Australian War Memorial website, the legendary cricketer Keith Miller, who flew de Havilland Mosquitoes in World War II, was once questioned on how he managed pressure on the field. His reply was suitably dismissive. "Pressure," he explained, "is a Messerschmitt up your a***."

This story of Singapore's athletes on the front lines by my colleague Low Lin Fhoong is a valuable one. It tells us this fight needs every working hand, it reminds us fame gives no one immunity, it informs us that athletes aren't one-dimensional people.

There is no winning bonus here for them, no glory, no parade, no adequate sleep hours. This is real life and its harsher repercussions. No medal is to be given out, but respect is to be found. For they have done the most elemental thing: they have answered duty's call.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on May 31, 2020, with the headline On medical front lines, athletes do a tour of duty. Subscribe