Head Injuries In Sliding Sports

candylandriots

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Berlin
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
 

edoug

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First and most importantly, I hope you're doing okay with no long-term effects. To be honest, I think it is a question I should ask you.
Would you recommend it to a friend's child? What would you say to them if they were really interested in participating in the sport. I was glad my nephew stopped playing football. I never told him I preferred he didn't play. But would have told him about my concerns if asked.
About the luge and skeleton, they look crazy to me. So it wouldn't take much for me to understand why they would discontinue it.
 
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MuzzyField

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Interesting article and thanks for posting and including your personal story.

Speed vs.skill is the equation. The goal is to find a balance between the two leaning towards skill and improving safety at the probable cost of speed.

NASCAR had to make this decision in the late 80's when Bill Elliott qualified at 212mph at Talladega and the combination of speed and track basically turned the cars into flight capable objects. I think Bobby Allison might have landed in Atlanta if the fence didn't kind of catch him and bring on the restrictor plate era.

Auto racing has improved wall technology and in-car driver safety with seat and 'HANS device" advances. I think sled tracks can be made safer, not so sure about sleds and drivers equipment.
 

candylandriots

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First and most importantly, I hope you're doing okay with no long-term effects. To be honest, I think it is a question I should ask you.
Would you recommend it to a friend's child? What would you say to them if they were really interested in participating in the sport. I was glad my nephew stopped playing football. I never told him I preferred he didn't play. But would have told him about my concerns if asked.
About the luge and skeleton, they look crazy to me. So it wouldn't take much for me to understand why they would discontinue it.
First off - thank you. I’m fine. I have had some depression and stuff, but it hasn’t been severe and I would be reluctant to put it on the sport given there are other possible causes. Maybe it was a contributor, who knows. It’s one of those things that’s impossible to tell I suppose.

I hadn’t really thought about recommending it to a friend’s child. That’s a good question. The one good thing about skeleton is that you’re probably not going to try it until you’re college-aged, so at least you can be pretty certain about the brain development in a way that you won’t be with youth football. I know a few people in the USA that started that (and more commonly, luge) earlier, but it’s a rare exception. I see some athletes as young as 15-16 doing it. I would maybe recommend that a kid try it for a season to see if there is some kind of elite skill. Let’s face it, unless you’re competing at a top level, there isn’t much reward (other than the competition) in the sport. I think I’d want to work on a plan of what “walking away” would look like before someone got into intensive training. I think that a kid old enough to get into the sport hopefully is mature enough to at least understand what’s at stake, even if not necessarily mature enough to be able to give up the chance at an Olympic medal at a young age even if he or she has suffered brain injuries. That’s really tough.

I’m happy I have had the experience to do it regardless of the fact that I have had those concussion(s) and smashed up thumb and a fractured foot out of it. It’s also been 10-11 years since I’ve been down any track but my favorite one...one where I know every turn and how it tends to react. I’d be scared shitless to go down a brand new track right now, except for maybe Igls (more on that later) where some friends have invited me for the annual over-40 races, which is more an excuse to drink beer than elite competition.
 

candylandriots

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Interesting article and thanks for posting and including your personal story.

Speed vs.skill is the equation. The goal is to find a balance between the two leaning towards skill and improving safety at the probable cost of speed.

NASCAR had to make this decision in the late 80's when Bill Elliott qualified at 212mph at Talladega and the combination of speed and track basically turned the cars into flight capable objects. I think Bobby Allison might have landed in Atlanta if the fence didn't kind of catch him and bring on the restrictor plate era.

Auto racing has improved wall technology and in-car driver safety with seat and 'HANS device" advances. I think sled tracks can be made safer, not so sure about sleds and drivers equipment.
You’ve hit on something important here. There are two main parts to skeleton - pushing and driving. There are tracks (like Igls) that are very short and quite easy (I haven’t slid there, but they run the international training school there for brand new European athletes from outside the big countries in the sport) and by all accounts is very safe. It basically turns into a track meet, especially at the World Cup level. Whoever has the fastest starts tends to be on the podium for that race. Park City also has that reputation. I don’t see that as particularly an interesting way to contest a race. On the other hand, St. Moritz is very long and has a very technical top (where you are traveling very slowly, so a mistake there KILLS your time), so the start is relatively unimportant (though still matters). I like that kind of track better, especially because I’m a slow, slow starter. Others tend to fall in between. It seems like the federation has decided that Whistler is going to be the outlier track (and Altenberg also has a technical reputation—funny story about it, the East Germans built it in the woods and didn’t tell anyone about it. The idea was to take the hardest parts of other tracks around the world and put them on one track that only they used, so that they could practice!).

Given the cost and their relative lack of use, new tracks come online about as quickly as old ones disappear, so it does keep some variety and ability to upgrade safety features on the newer tracks. I don’t know much of anything about building a track, but I’d like to think the engineers have learned a bit about safety since the first refrigerated tracks. Outside of that, the only thing I can think of is improving helmet technology and making it mandatory. But again, there has to be a trade off, because if the helmet is too heavy, the athlete won’t be able to support it when hitting the curves.

I mostly know skeleton. I have never been in a bobsled wreck, but that would scare me way more than a skeleton crash. I don’t know what you do about that either.
 

candylandriots

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There’s one thing that could help that I totally forgot and one thing that a friend reminded me of.

First, skeleton sleds are not allowed any vibration dampening materials. That should change. I have a layer of neoprene over the frame of my sled. I’m not 100% sure that would even be legal in an official race. But no springs or shocks or anything like that is allowed.

The other crazy thing is that athletes cannot be substituted for one another and have the nation keep the rankings. To explain better, there are quotas for the number of sleds a nation can enter in the World Championships and Olympics. It’s based on the top athletes from that country. If someone is hurt, there is enormous pressure for that athlete to keep competing so as not to lose a spot in the big race. The pressure not to let your teammates, coaches and nation down in that circumstance has to be enormous.
 

candylandriots

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Bump for another NYT take of an athlete struggling after head injuries in skeleton.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/sports/olympics/skeleton-concussion-bobsled-head-injuries.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR19gwQ1aDel2pV6BvIpYusscP2zX_WGSPI4u897_Dck9-YGg6PmOL6OsQw
I do like the suggestion of limiting runs, though I would have the rule apply more to home tracks. It dampens some of the home ice advantage without necessarily preventing someone from learning a new track in training before a race (which was a contributing factor to the luge death and overall fiasco of the 2010 Olympics at the Whistler Sliding Center.)

I used to do as many as four runs a day when I was younger, but quickly realized nothing good ever came after the second one. Two a day is the protocol for official training before a race. It’s probably a good idea for development athletes who are learning the sport while others are on tour.