After the suicide of American bobsled legend Steve Holcomb a few years ago and more recently the suicide of Pavle Jovanovic just a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times did an investigation into the potential brain injuries that athletes suffer from bobsled and skeleton.
Some of you know that I’ve done skeleton for a number of years (though far less as I’ve aged) though I was never close to being an elite athlete. My trips down the track are measured in the hundreds instead of thousands. But I’ve definitely had my bell rung, and I am near certain that I’ve had at least one (and probably 3 or 4) concussions from it. Some of my friends in the sport have had serious enough head injuries to walk away from it. And this article was a little personal too, as I have dealt with some of the issues that these athletes discussed in the article, though not to the dangerous levels discussed.i hadn’t made the connection before, and now I’m wondering if there is one.
So now I’m wondering if this is truly a natural consequence of sliding sports, should they continue? I’m grateful that the trend of harder, faster, more technical tracks ended with Whistler (and from what I understand, that track has been ‘nerfed’ from the extremes it was at during the 2010 Olympics that resulted in one dead luge athlete, luge starts being moved down one level, and a larger than normal number of crashes and bruises in skeleton and bobsled - all of which was compounded by the Canadian “Own The Podium” drive which didn’t allow other athletes on the track beyond what was required by the rules).
The safety improvements (at least in skeleton) have been very small and incremental since I began the sport. Basically, helmets used to be an anything goes sort of thing, and now there are more stringent standards. And mouthguards were uncommon when I started, and after people learned about their connection to preventing concussions, they are much more prevalent now (I didn’t have one when I had my first, and worst, concussion, but always use one since learning about the connection).
Anyway, I’m not sure if this subject will bring too much discussion, but I did want to share the story with anyone interested.
One last aside, a friend who competed in luge and skeleton explained that he found the headaches from luge worse than skeleton, despite the suspension straps, because it rattles your whole cervical spine instead of just slamming your head to the ice. The article doesn’t get into luge, but seems to suggest it’s not as rough on the head. I’ve never done luge myself, and few athletes do both sports, so that’s an interesting data point, though it’s a very small sample.
One final thing that absolutely shocked me from the article was the max g-force registered during a trip down the Whistler track. We had always learned about 5g on a track like in Park City, but the physicist-athlete in the article measured a max of 85g!!! (for milliseconds, but still) during a ride down the Whistler track. I would never have guessed close to that number.
Anyway, here’s the article if anyone is interested. Curious to hear some opinions from outside the sport whether sports like this should continue if these are the consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-bobsled-suicide-brain-injuries.html
Some of you know that I’ve done skeleton for a number of years (though far less as I’ve aged) though I was never close to being an elite athlete. My trips down the track are measured in the hundreds instead of thousands. But I’ve definitely had my bell rung, and I am near certain that I’ve had at least one (and probably 3 or 4) concussions from it. Some of my friends in the sport have had serious enough head injuries to walk away from it. And this article was a little personal too, as I have dealt with some of the issues that these athletes discussed in the article, though not to the dangerous levels discussed.i hadn’t made the connection before, and now I’m wondering if there is one.
So now I’m wondering if this is truly a natural consequence of sliding sports, should they continue? I’m grateful that the trend of harder, faster, more technical tracks ended with Whistler (and from what I understand, that track has been ‘nerfed’ from the extremes it was at during the 2010 Olympics that resulted in one dead luge athlete, luge starts being moved down one level, and a larger than normal number of crashes and bruises in skeleton and bobsled - all of which was compounded by the Canadian “Own The Podium” drive which didn’t allow other athletes on the track beyond what was required by the rules).
The safety improvements (at least in skeleton) have been very small and incremental since I began the sport. Basically, helmets used to be an anything goes sort of thing, and now there are more stringent standards. And mouthguards were uncommon when I started, and after people learned about their connection to preventing concussions, they are much more prevalent now (I didn’t have one when I had my first, and worst, concussion, but always use one since learning about the connection).
Anyway, I’m not sure if this subject will bring too much discussion, but I did want to share the story with anyone interested.
One last aside, a friend who competed in luge and skeleton explained that he found the headaches from luge worse than skeleton, despite the suspension straps, because it rattles your whole cervical spine instead of just slamming your head to the ice. The article doesn’t get into luge, but seems to suggest it’s not as rough on the head. I’ve never done luge myself, and few athletes do both sports, so that’s an interesting data point, though it’s a very small sample.
One final thing that absolutely shocked me from the article was the max g-force registered during a trip down the Whistler track. We had always learned about 5g on a track like in Park City, but the physicist-athlete in the article measured a max of 85g!!! (for milliseconds, but still) during a ride down the Whistler track. I would never have guessed close to that number.
Anyway, here’s the article if anyone is interested. Curious to hear some opinions from outside the sport whether sports like this should continue if these are the consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-bobsled-suicide-brain-injuries.html