National Medical Teams during European Athletics Championships from 2009 To 2024: Composition, Gender Distribution, and Influence on Team Performance.

Background: Having the overall goal to help countries/teams in the preparation of their national medical teams for international athletics championships, we aimed to describe the composition of national medical teams, including gender distribution, and to explore its potential association with team performance, during European Athletics championships. We conducted a retrospective study covering 15 consecutive outdoor and indoor European Athletics championships between 2009 and 2024 including the national medical team members and athletes registered. We extracted the number of national medical team members by profession and gender, the ratio of athletes per national medical team member, and the number of medals per athlete. Potential associations were explored using Spearman's correlations.

Results: During the 15 consecutive European Athletics championships between 2009 and 2024, 54 European Athletics member federations participated at one or more of the championships, corresponding to 726 country-participations, from which 68.5% had a national medical team. The national medical team included: 71.0% physiotherapists and 29.0% physicians, 20.7% women and 79.3% men. There was a median of 11 (range: 1-43) athletes per physiotherapist and 23 (range: 3-64) athletes per physician. There was a small but significant negative correlation between the number of medals per athlete and the ratio of athletes per medical team member (r=-0.33; p < 0.001).

Conclusions: During the European Athletics championships, approximately two-thirds of countries/teams had a national medical team, with a median of eight athletes per medical team member, with large variation between teams. Only one out of five medical team members were women. When the number of athletes per medical team member was higher, this was associated with a lower number of medals per athlete. These findings may be of help to assemble effective and successful medical teams in future championships.