Sports stars rely on ‘Steady’ hand to heal them
By Bill Gallo 
| July 29, 2009 | 10:55 AM
John Elway's shoulder was strong enough to carry the Broncos to two Super Bowl win late in his career thanks to the Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail.(Photo from Newscom)
When All-Pro cornerback Rod Woodson and the NFL’s career sacks leader, Bruce Smith, are inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 8, one of the most beloved guests in the audience will be a former third-string tackle for Texas A&M who hardly ever played a down.
Dick Steadman’s contributions to the game — in fact, to many of the world’s games — have been enacted not under stadium lights but in the cold glare of operating rooms. No bats, balls or racquets for the man old friends call “Steady.” For him, the instruments of victory are the scalpel and the arthroscope.
J. Richard Steadman, M.D., co-founder of Vail’s renowned Steadman Hawkins Clinic, said he first dreamed of being a doctor at age 13. Good choice. An innovator in orthopedic surgery and sports medicine for more than three decades, his pioneering work in microfracture surgery, particularly in ravaged knee joints, has restored thousands of athletic careers — amateur, collegiate and professional.
Just ask the Buffalo Bills’ great defensive end, who will be enshrined at Canton, Ohio, in 10 days. In the clinic’s long, third-floor hall at the Vail Valley Medical Center, a fierce Bruce Smith glowers from a framed game-day poster. The inscription reads: “To Dr. Steadman. Thanks for Keeping My Wheels Rolling.”
Like Woodson, former Olympic skiers Phil and Steve Mahre, golfer Greg Norman, basketball star Kobe Bryant and scores of other world-class athletes, Smith owes the longevity of his playing days in large part to Steadman. At age 72, Steadman remains the first-call orthopedist for many pro players whose torn anterior cruciate ligaments and ruined knee cartilage threaten their livelihoods and legacies.
Denver Broncos fans, too, could aptly raise three cheers for the big Texan in the green scrubs. In the 1990s, Steadman cleaned up John Elway’s long-damaged left knee, while his partner at the clinic, Dr. Richard Hawkins, repaired the quarterback’s ailing right shoulder. In the aftermath, No. 7 helped put the Broncos’ perennial frustrations to rest with two consecutive Super Bowl wins.
“We’ve been so blessed with success,” said Lyon Steadman, the clinic’s CEO, and son of the surgeon. “It’s hard to believe we’ve come this far.”
History of innovation
Steadman and the Canadian-born Hawkins, a former college quarterback who specializes in shoulder surgery, founded the clinic in 1990 at the urging of then-Vail Associates Chairman George Gillett, who wanted to bring top-of-the-line orthopedic care to the sports-crazy ski resort.
In the beginning it was a quiet two-doctor practice (there are now 10 surgeons on staff), but the principals’ resumes were already impressive. Hawkins had been chief physician for the 1988 Canadian Winter Olympics team. Steadman, a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, had made his bones with some high-profile cases in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
When American ski racers Phil and Steve Mahre suffered gruesome knee injuries, their careers appeared to be over. But Steadman’s revolutionary microfracture technique, in which he drills tiny holes in the knee joint to induce bleeding, clotting and the subsequent regeneration of cartilage, got the Mahre brothers back to the starting gate.
The coaches were dazzled: Steadman later was named medical director for the U.S. Ski Team, a post he still holds.
When Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino brought his wounded knee and other leg injuries to Steadman Hawkins in the mid-80s, the entire sports world took notice. Marino autographed his action photo in the clinic’s waiting room this way: “Dr. Steadman: You the main man!”
“Luckily, I wasn’t a very good athlete,” the surgeon said last week in his office, which is more clogged with sports jerseys, photos and memorabilia than any teenager’s bedroom. “Otherwise, I might never have gone to medical school.”
Pro athletes, weekend warriors and regular folks
As the clinic approaches its 20th anniversary, Steadman has personally performed more than 3,000 microfracture surgeries. The Steadman Hawkins Foundation raises $3 million a year from grateful patients and corporate donors for research in surgical techniques (12,000 knee procedures, 6,000 shoulders and 1,000 patched hips are piled up in the clinic’s database), bio-mechanics and adult stem-cell healing. Two years ago, Steadman Hawkins developed a new dual-plane fluoroscopy technique to analyze stresses on muscles, bones and ligaments.
“We’re aiming to validate the basic science and the clinical practices developed here,” Lyon Steadman said. “And we share the findings with everyone. There are no company secrets.”
Each year, the clinic trains six fellows, fresh from their residencies in orthopedics, in the latest Steadman Hawkins techniques, including Steadman’s relatively new, less invasive treatment for ACL injuries. As the young doctors move on to their own practices, this knowledge spreads far and wide.
Along with its close ties to professional teams and top sports agents (like the famously hard-driving Scott Boras), the clinic also has developed medical research relationships with universities — including Michigan State, Colorado State, Pittsburgh and Columbia.
Hawkins, who was team doctor for both the Broncos and the Colorado Rockies, left the Vail practice five years ago to form the Steadman Hawkins Clinic of the Carolinas in Spartanburg, S.C. But some new surgical stars have emerged to share the workload — and the limelight — with Steadman.
William Sterrett specializes in knees and shoulders, and Marc Philippon, an innovator in hip arthroscopy, has treated everyone from hockey star Mario Lemieux to Kansas City running back Priest Holmes to New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod spent much of the early 2009 season in Vail-based rehab after Philippon performed hip surgery on him.
That’s not the whole story, of course. For every Mario Lemieux, Martina Navratilova or Kenyon Martin who hobbles through the clinic’s doors, there are 50 banged-up weekend warriors hoping to climb back onto their mountain bikes or do battle in a club tennis tournament. Singer Rod Stewart came to Vail for leg repairs so he could return to his amateur soccer team.
The Steadman Hawkins Clinic sees more than 10,000 of the halt and the lame every year: Recent patients include both New York Mets centerfielder Carlos Beltran, whose knee trauma has kept him out of the lineup since late June, and a courteous young waiter at Vail’s Sweet Basil restaurant, whose right thumb and wrist remain heavily bandaged after a snowboarding crash this spring.
“They took great care of me,” he said. “Just like A-Rod.”
Happy to be on the sidelines
When Richard Steadman, M.D., goes to Canton next week for the Hall of Fame inductions of NFL stars Woodson and Smith, he says he will take special pride in the supporting role he once played in their dramas.
“You can’t help but enjoy it,” the surgeon said. “I follow the careers of the guys I’ve treated. Like (Yankees first baseman) Mark Texeira, who was my patient last season and an All-Star this year. Woodson and Smith mean a lot to me because I aided comebacks for both of them. You kind of live through your athletes, I suppose.”
That won’t end anytime soon. At 72, the country’s most famous knee surgeon has no plans to retire, and he said he believes the frequency and severity of sports injuries are proliferating.
“The level of training and the intensity in most sports are increasing,” he said. “The players are bigger and stronger than they were 20 years ago, and while that lets them go faster and harder, it also puts more pressure on the joints. As the quality improves, the risk gets greater. Equipment plays a role too. For instance, the new skis makes it easier to make a great turn, but that also puts more pressure on the knees.”
It’s likely, then, that the Steadman Hawkins clinic, already sorely pressed for space, will need more room in its corridors and cubbyholes for the signed game jerseys and appreciatively autographed photo murals sent to Vail by its most illustrious ex-patients.
For eloquence and expressed gratitude, though, it might be hard to top the blood-red jersey donated by European soccer star Ruud van Nistelroy after successful knee surgery. “To Steady,” the inscription reads. “Thank you for giving me back my dream.”
A-Rod, arthroscope, athletes, Greg Norman, john elway, orthopedics, sports medicine, steadman hawkins clinic, surgery, vail
