An athletic therapist from Steinbach is continuing to pursue his dream of being the Chief Therapist for Team Canada at an Olympic games. Dave Blatz has just returned from the Commonwealth Games in Australia where he was the Chief Therapist, in charge of a team that looked after 283 athletes and 450 delegates. He explains what the role involves.

Dave Blatz, Chief Therapist For Team Canada at the Commonwealth Games."The Chief Medical Officer and myself, in collaboration, created a multi-disciplinary team of sports physiotherapists, sports chiropractors, athletic therapists and sports massage personnel. What we do is we assign all those therapists to different teams of Canadian Athletes. I ensure that proper rehab and proper therapy is delivered to all the athletes at the games. It's a little bit more of a management or administrative role. We do have to set up the whole clinic prior to the games, so I was gone for a month. That was setup and takedown and sending back and making sure there is good inventory going back to Ottawa with all our supplies and that sort of thing."

Blatz adds it was a wonderful experience and he would now like to have this responsibility on an even bigger stage.

"I think every therapist, once they've gone to a major games, aspires to become a chief therapist at a major games. The Commonwealth Games was a great event for me to cut my teeth in this role. Eventually, I would like to be a Chief Therapist at an Olympics and after that, who knows? If you can demonstrate that you've been a therapist at a major games before, you compile that into your CV (resume) and you accumulate points. Everything basically works on a points system at that point. Hopefully, there is a Chief Therapist role for me at an Olympics coming down the road."