Tony Daly, 74; sports doctor for famous athletes, including Clippers and Olympians
Tony Daly, a doctor for sports stars who became one in his own right because of this work, died Friday at his home in Beverly Hills after a six-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 74.
At the time of his death, Daly was director of sports medicine at the Diagnostic and Interventional Sports Care and Orthopedics center in Marina del Rey. He had been the Clippers' team doctor since the NBA franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1984.
"Tony's accomplishments in his profession have been many; his contributions to the Clippers endless," team owner Donald T. Sterling said in a statement Saturday. "First and foremost, though, the way his unique personality lifted everyone he met is what will be most remembered and most missed."
As an orthopedic surgeon, Daly held local and international sports medicine positions. He was the team doctor for USA Hockey in 1980, when the famous "Miracle on Ice" victory in Lake Placid, N.Y., over the Soviets punctuated the U.S. team's march to a gold medal.
"There were at least a half-dozen of those players who might not have played," said Peter Ueberroth, a longtime friend of Daly's and chairman of the United States Olympic Committee's Board of Directors. "But Tony got them on the ice."
Daly recently recalled that at the end of that hockey game against the Soviets, with the U.S. protecting a lead, "those last seven minutes were the longest of my life."
Anthony Francis Daly Jr. was born in 1933 in New Brunswick, N.J. He graduated from Rutgers University and Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and spent time as a military doctor before moving west and becoming a pioneer in sports medicine.
Among his positions held in sports, Daly was a member of the International Olympic Committee's medical staff at the Sarajevo Winter Games in 1984; was team doctor for the USA Basketball for Summer Olympics in Montreal in 1976 and Athens in 2004; was medical director for the international soccer federation (FIFA) at the World Cup in 1994 in Los Angeles; and was medical director for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Games.
"He was one of the pillars of the '84 Olympics," said Ueberroth, who ran those Games as president of the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee.
Ernie Vandeweghe, former NBA player, former Laker doctor, and longtime medical associate of Daly's, said, "Athletes shy away from doctors. Not from Tony. When he worked on you, you were his friend for life."
