Dr Celeste Geertsema

Dr Celeste Geertsema is a sports physician with a career focusing on major international event cover and supporting athletes pushing the extremes of human performance.

Her experience includes working at ten FIFA World Cups, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, World Championships in Athletics, Handball and Swimming, and several other international sporting events in 17 countries. Representing the IOC, FIFA, Local Organizing Committees or her home country (New Zealand), she has worked either as team doctor, Venue Medical Officer or Chief Medical Officer, giving her a 360-degree experience of major event cover. More recently, she was the medical lead responsible for training the 3500-strong medical workforce at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar 2022.

She also has a passion for adventure sports and worked as ski patrol doctor on a volcano in New Zealand, as medical officer for the NZ Army, and provided medical cover for the Mt Everest marathon, the Taupo Ironman, the Comrades ultramarathon and expeditions to Aconcagua and Mt Everest. She has worked, skied, kite-surfed, run, kayaked or SCUBA-dived in each of the seven continents and completed a 250km ultramarathon in the Gobi Desert. She is currently doing a master’s degree in Extreme Medicine at the University of Exeter.

She believes life is an adventure and passionately support equal opportunities in sports and medicine, irrespective of sex, gender, race, religion or cultural background.