Sports therapist Penny Macutkiewicz has worked her magic on many a top athlete. Now non-sports people recovering from injuries can also benefit from her skills.

IT is difficult not to be impressed by the testimonials on Penny Macutkiewicz’s website.

Penny, a sports injury therapist, runs The Performance Clinic at venues in Sunderland and Newcastle.

Her clinic has only been open for about 18 months, but her skills as a physiotherapist have attracted rave reviews from a number of well-known sports personalities from the region.

Top of the list is Sunderland boxing hero Tony Jefferies, who won a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. His entry on the website is an extraordinary tribute to Penny’s skills.

Just before the Olympic qualifiers a bad hamstring injury stopped him from running.

Despite seeing “about four different top sports physios”, none of them could sort him out.

Kicked off the Olympics team, he went to see Penny. “In two or three sessions she sorted my hamstring out and I could run again,” he says.

Running his way back to fitness, Tony went on to win back his place on the Olympic team, went to Beijing and won his bronze medal.

Other testimonials include Olympic bronze medal swimmer Jo Jackson, from Richmond, England bowling coach Ottis Gibson, double Commonwealth swimming champion Chris Cook and Newcastle Eagles vice captain Andrew Bridge.

Penny moved to the North-East in 2005 to work as a physiotherapist with the English Institute of Sport at the Gateshead International Stadium. A few years earlier she had abandoned hopes of being a top-class pole jumper and concentrate on becoming an elite physiotherapist.

“I was a track and field athlete, a pole vaulter. I wanted to try to go to the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics, but I thought I had better have a back-up plan – and that was to become a sports physio.”

Penny completed a physiotherapy degree at the University of Wales in Cardiff in 1998 and spent the next few years plying her trade in local NHS hospitals.

“I worked in neurology, paediatrics and other areas. It gave me a really strong foundation to learn about physiotherapy,” she says.

A few years later, when she was training with a view to taking part in the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, a serious injury led her to opt out and concentrated on her career in sport physiotherapy. Her connections, her skill and her enthusiasm opened doors and she soon found herself working with the British athletics team all over the world.

Moving to Gateshead led to Penny’s transition from being a track and field specialist to a general sports physio.

“So I would look after the British swimming team, the English rugby team, fencing, wheelchair athletes, basically when anyone is in the North-East.”

Penny is also the lead physio for Olympic or Paralympic athletes who live in the region.

“I still do that part-time, but in 2009, I started building up my own clinic,” she says.

The spur for this was her concern that many talented athletes were losing funding and were no longer getting the phyiotherapy support they used to enjoy.

“If someone is injured, it can ruin their career, so we decided to open the clinic so that anyone of any level can have access to the facilities we have and, hopefully, progress to the point where they can receive funding again.”

So far this has worked out really well, says Penny. While her team works with many outstanding athletes, she also provides a service for the staff and students of Sunderland and Northumbria universities. Anyone is welcome at her well-equipped clinics and Penny is keen to see more self-referrals from non-sports people who are trying to recover from injury.

One of her aims in working with two of the region’s universities – where her two clinics are situated – is to try to improve facilities in the North-East in order to attract more promising young sportsmen and women to the region.

“Now we have the support staff to ensure they will be performing as well as they can and not getting injured,” says Penny.

Clients can contact the clinic by phone or via the website and people can usually be seen at very short notice. “Rather than waiting to go to the NHS and then X number of weeks later seeing a doctor, they can see a sports doctor within 24 hours,” she says.

“If I am not getting someone feeling better within two or three sessions, then I am questioning myself,” she adds.

Oh – and that tongue-twister of a name?

“That’s because I married someone called Macutkiewicz,” says Penny.

Her husband, David, a sports physiologist, is actually on the staff at the clinic. And no, he’s not Polish. He is actually Italian.

“It has been a brilliant way to avoid unwanted emails,” says Penny.

• To contact The Performance Clinic, ring 0191-515-2009 for Sunderland and 0191-23- 2570 for the Newcastle clinic. Alternatively, visit theperformanceclinic.co.uk