Associate Professor Dr Carolyn Broderick (1982) made history this year as Australia’s first female Medical Director for an Olympic Games when the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) named her the Medical Director for the Australian Olympic team for the 2024 Paris Games.

Dr Carolyn Broderick is an Associate Professor in the School of Health Sciences at the University of NSW (UNSW) and Staff Specialist in Sport and Exercise Medicine at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. She has tended to children with sports and exercise-related issues for the past two decades, while also helping children with chronic diseases like haemophilia, cystic fibrosis and cancer, achieve their full potential.

Dr Broderick has a wealth of expertise and experience in elite sports. She is currently the Chief Medical Officer for Tennis Australia and The Australian Open Grand Slam. She was the Deputy Medical Director for the Australian Olympic Team at the 2016 Rio Games, the Team Physician at the 2012 London and 2000 Sydney Games, and the Medical Director the Australian Youth Olympic Team in Nanjing in 2014. She has also been a member of the AOC Medical Commission, the Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee (appointed by the Minister of Sport) and the National Sports Tribunal. She was one of two Australian representatives on the International Olympic Committee consensus panel on adolescent athletes.

Dr Broderick is currently a Chief Investigator on two National Health and Medical Research Council-funded studies in the area of Extreme Heat and Air Quality in Sport. She co-developed the Sports Medicine Australia Extreme Heat Policy which was released in 2021 and is used in all community sports in Australia. Dr Broderick was a co-author on the Lancet series on Heat & Health, published in August 2021. These papers are highly cited.

After completing the HSC at MLC School where she was a Prefect and a member of the Tildesley Tennis team, Dr Broderick graduated with a MBBS (Hons) at UNSW, a Fellowship at the Australasian College of Sports Physicians, a PhD at the University of Sydney (USyd), Graduate Diploma in Applied Science (Sport and Exercise Science) at USyd, completed the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates exams (American examinations for foreign medical graduates) and won the College of Sports Physicians Fellowship Medal for placing first in exams.

In being named the Olympic team’s medical Director, Dr Broderick succeeds Dr David Hughes AM, who held the role for eight years and chaired the panel responsible for finding his replacement. After the announcement, Dr Hughes posted on Twitter: “Delighted to see someone of the calibre of @carolyn_brod  take the reins as Medical Director for #Paris2024. Carolyn will take this role to a whole new level. The Australian Olympic Team is in very safe hands.”

Dr Broderick’s incredible achievements are a testament to her hard work and her dedication to providing the very best care to all her patients, from children to elite athletes.