In 1985 a group of practitioners led by Peter Brukner won the tender to establish a sports medicine centre in the Olympic Park sporting precinct. OPSMC was open for business in 1986 as a multidisciplinary clinic initially with sports doctors, physiotherapists and a dietitian. Soon after, massage therapy, podiatry and orthopaedic surgery were added to the team. The Clinic grew quickly to become the largest sports medicine clinic in Australia. It had associations with AFL clubs Melbourne, Collingwood, Richmond and Hawthorn, as well as a strong connection with Athletics which was housed next door to the clinic. Peter was Clinic Director for the Clinic’s first 20 years. Education and Research were key elements of the success of the Clinic right from the start. In 2010 the Clinic moved from its initial building into the new AAMI Park stadium and was soon joined next door by Imaging @ Olympic Park, a specialty sports imaging practice established by Dr Brukner and some radiologist colleagues.

In 1993 Peter Brukner and his co-author Karim Khan published the first edition of Clinical Sports Medicine. Not in their wildest dreams did the two of them imagine the impact of the book which over the past 30 years has sold 200,00 copies, been translated into numerous languages and become widely known as “the bible of sports medicine’. Further editions followed in 2001 (2nd ed), 2006 (3rd ed), and 2012 (4th ed). By this stage the book was getting so big it was decided to split the 5th edition into two volumes – Volume 1: Injuries, published in 2017, and Volume 2: The Medicine of Exercise, published in 2019. The two authors along with their >100 chapter contributors are now writing the 6th edition which will be in 3 volumes, the first of which is due for publication in December 2024.