Team Doctor
Thursday 31 December 2015 19:29, UK
Dr Derick Macleod
With a wide variety of sporting experience under his belt, cycling proved to be a new and exciting challenge for Dr Derick Macleod when he joined Team Sky in 2015.
Still working as a GP three days a week on the outskirts of Inverness, Derick has called his local practice home since 1992.
Adding more and more sports medicine experience to his CV over the last 15 years, he started off primarily in football, working for his local side Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Work with the Scottish Football Association and specifically the under-19 youth team followed.
That developing experience saw Derick begin working with the Sport Scotland Institute of Sport and their athletes - a role he has carried out for last 10 years.
From 2009 he began to take on more multi-sports experience, initially as part of the Youth Games, heading to the Youth Festival in Poland, as well as the first Youth Summer Olympics in Singapore, and the Youth Winter Games in Innsbruck.
No stranger to the Winter Olympics, Derick began working with Team GB at the preparation camp in Calgary ahead of the 2010 Vancouver Games, and was Team GB doctor in Sochi 2014.
Despite a multitude of sporting experience, cycling proved an entirely new challenge when he became part of Team Sky's medical staff.
"Joining Team Sky was a huge opportunity," he said. "I'm used to travelling with sport but cycling takes it to a different dimension, with the fact that the team is on the road for the majority of the year. The constancy of that and the demands are certainly a challenge, but one I've relished."
