Sarah Burke’s frightening condition: a wake-up call that sports aren’t always safe

The story of Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke took another scary twist Monday, as a press conference called by her agent and publicist was cancelled at the last minute as "there was nothing the family wanted to report". Six days after a training accident on a 22-foot Park City, Utah halfpipe, Burke remains sedated and on a breathing tube while doctors are running further neurological tests. Her accident is a reminder that despite all the science, dollars and effort poured into making sports safer, there's still substantial risk of injury involved in just about every aspect of top-flight athletic competitions.

Burke's far from a novice in the world of extreme skiing. She's a four-time Winter X Games champion who would have been defending her title later this month in Aspen if the accident hadn't intervened. She's also the first woman to land a 1080 in competition and was one of the key figures in the move to get her primary sport of freestyle halfpipe skiing included in the Olympics; she likely would have entered 2014 as a medal favourite. Yet, even someone as experienced as Burke still can suffer horrendous injuries; all it takes is one little mistake, one minute change in conditions, or one tiny incidence of bad luck.

Some will undoubtedly use Burke's case (and similar ones like that of snowboarder Kevin Pearce, who received a serious brain injury in a Dec. 31, 2009 crash on the same halfpipe) to campaign that extreme sports are too dangerous, but it's worth pointing out that traumatic injuries aren't confined to just the high-octane halfpipe events. The rise of information on concussions has led to frightening developments in the CFL, NFL and NHL, amongst other leagues, and the growing conclusion is that no sport is really safe. Not every injury is as instantly tragic as cases like those of Burke or Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili (who died following a crash during a training run at the 2010 Winter Olympics), but just about every sport involves some form of physical danger.

Does that mean we should ban all sports, or even just some of the more extreme ones like freestyle halfpipe skiing? I don't think so. While they undoubtedly carry substantial risk, sports also provide a way for many men and women to use their talents, become the best they can be in their particular area of expertise and generally have a blast doing so. Moreover, every area of life carries risk; huge numbers of people die from car accidents and drowning every year, but we haven't banned driving or swimming. The key elements are twofold; more work needs to be done to ensure that sports (and particularly the extreme sports) are as safe for the participants as we can possibly make them, and participants need to be thoroughly aware that no sport can ever be perfectly safe. Burke's story is a reminder that every sports activity can be dangerous, no matter how often you've done it before, and it's a call to be vigilant in striving to make sports safer wherever possible. It's also a chance for us all to get behind this amazing Canadian athlete and wish her the very best in her recovery.