FORT KENT – It does not get more hands-on than this. Students in the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s athletic training education program are in Fort Kent all week offering free therapeutic massages to competitors in the 2004 Biathlon World Cup.

The UMPI students and faculty set up shop in the third-floor reception area in the athlete’s housing on the University of Maine at Fort Kent campus. In all, 16 students in the UMPI program will alternate this week, offering sports massages to biathletes after each competition.

More than 150 athletes from 24 countries are in Fort Kent for the World Cup event at the 10th Mountain Division Center. All are world class, all are focused competitors and all push their bodies to the limit.

That’s where the UMPI students come in.

“In our curriculum the students are trained to offer sports massage,” Kim McCrea, assistant athletic trainer at UMPI, said Thursday afternoon. Behind her, biathletes lay on tables while students soothed their muscles using their hands and essential oils.

“As part of our program, students need to be exposed to Olympic caliber athletes,” she said. “This is a great way for them to get that exposure and to do something for the community.”

During competition – or during any intense workout – lactic acids build up in the muscles as part of the metabolic process, McCrea said. Getting rid of those lactic acids helps aid the recovery process.

“The massage helps to flush the acids out and decrease any muscle soreness,” she said. “The biathletes have been very receptive to this.”

Working with athletes from a number of different countries does present some unique challenges, McCrea said.

“There has been a bit of a language barrier,” she said. “But we point to the different body parts and we work it out.”

For the students, it was a double opportunity – the chance to put what they have learned to practical use with some of the best athletes in the world.

“This is really a great experience,” Frances Allen, a sophomore in the athletic education program, said in between giving massages Thursday afternoon. “We get to work with world class athletes and help them out.”

Equally enthusiastic was fellow student Brad Holabird.

“This gives us another chance to experience what we have learned,” he said. “And not just on regular athletes [but] on World Cup athletes.”

“We want our students to develop relationships with Olympic-type events,” Barbara Blackstone, director of UMPI’s athletic trainer education program, said Thursday. “You can’t get any better than these biathletes and they are only an hour away from here.”

The students, Blackstone said, enjoy seeing how their knowledge can work in the athletes’ favor.

“The students love it,” she said. “They really get encouraged when they see they can actually help with injuries and recovery.”