The School of Biomedical Engineering is pleased to share that faculty member, Dr. Babak Shadgan, will serve as the Medical Director of Wrestling Competitions at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The wrestling competitions will take place from August 5 to 11, 2024, at the Paris Champ-de-Mars Arena. Dr. Shadgan has been providing his expertise in imaging, optic and photonics to the Olympic Games since 2004.

As the head of the UWW Medical Commission, Dr. Shadgan develops and implements injury prevention programs in wrestling. After analyzing video clips of wrestling injuries during previous Olympic Games and World Championships, Dr. Shadgan developed a new approach to train referees that aims to reduce the rate and severity of musculoskeletal injuries during wrestling competitions. The approach teaches the referees to understand the mechanisms of injuries so they can stop dangerous actions and techniques before they cause harm. Since initiating this program, the rate and severity of wrestling injuries have gradually reduced. This approach will be implemented at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

The approach works. During the 2018 Junior Wrestling World Championships in Slovakia, the rate of injuries exceeded 22 injuries per 100 matches when referees used their usual officiating style. Two months later, a subset of the same athletes participated in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Argentina, with the same group of referees officiating. The referees were trained in this method and asked to be sensitive to dangerous actions and stop them as soon as possible. As a result, the recorded injuries dropped to 2% during that competition.

“Developing this approach and preventing injuries in wrestling is a significant professional achievement in my career.” Dr. Shadgan comments. “I developed this novel approach to sports injury prevention, which is an important task of the International Federation and has attracted the attention of the IOC Medical Commission as a new model of injury prevention in contact sports.”

Recently published papers from Dr. Babak Shadgan in the British Journal of Sports Medicine:

Wrestling injuries during the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/06/18/bjsports-2023-108056

Referees can prevent injuries in wrestling; an experience from the 2018 youth olympic games: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/Suppl_1/A74.2