Dr. Scholl Recounts Time Spent At Rio Olympics

Blame it on Rio.
Patients will have to forgive Dr. Derek Scholl for a while as, while making sure he is taking care of his patients, his mind may occasionally wander back to his time spent in Rio, working and taking in the sights from the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Scholl took a break from competition at the recent human foosball tournament to share his thoughts about his time spent in the Brazilian capital city.
According to Scholl, the training facility (for the wrestlers) was impressive. “Hanging out at the training facility  every day, that was pretty cool,” he said.  While he was there to work with American wrestler Jordan Burroughs, he was able to rub elbows with several others.
“Kyle Snyder won a Gold Medal on Sunday, became the youngest USA wrestler to win a gold medal at twenty years of age. I worked on him earlier in the week. I kinda hung out with J’den Cox who is a bronze medalist,” Scholl explained. “To just hang out at the wrestling facility – you’re talking about some of the greats in American wrestling. Not even just the wrestlers, most of them are coaches. Caleb Sanderson, Tom Brands (the head coach at Iowa).”
Since athletes are so tuned into their bodies, they can be a great help to their chiropractic doctors. “I’m of the mindset that you have to treat every patient the same, no one gets preferential treatment but someone like Jordan – any sort of elite athlete – they know their body better than anybody.”
When asked if there are common areas that wrestlers need chiropractic work on, Scholl described it this way: “We focus on a lot of spinal decompression because their are always taking blows to the head, its just the nature of the sport. We try not to do too much, sometimes if you over do it, it can be a hindrance because you can flare muscles up. You have to listen to them, because they know their bodies better than anybody.”
As far as Rio de Janeiro, Scholl didn’t experience all the negatives that were being reported back in the states.
“You would be walking around and, if the wind shifted, you could smell sewage. Rio has three large “slums” that they don’t even try to hide, its just part of the culture. They are all on hills so that is where most of the sewage that gets dumped into the ocean comes from, when it rains it all runs downhill. All of that is away from the main Copa Cabana and Ipa Nima.”
Scholl said he didn’t really fear for his safety while there. “As far as safety, every day I took a taxi by myself up to the training facility and back.” He did say the incident with USA swimmer Ryan Lochte didn’t make things comfortable for the other American athletes. “when I landed on Sunday down there, it (the incident) was all kinda breaking. When we went to Christ the Redeemer (iconic Rio statue that overlooks the city), we were riding the cable car up and the tour guide was so irate about it. He was like ‘they gave us such a bad name!’. At that time, it was all coming out as a lie.”
According to Scholl, Burroughs has already said he plans to wrestle in the 2020 games and, if the doctor has any say, he’ll be a part of his medical team once again.