The importance of sports medicine for the Vancouver Olympic Games
- Correspondence to Professor Lars Engebretsen, Ortopedisk avdeling Ulleval sykehus, Oslo 0407, Norway; lars.engebretsen{at}medisin.uio.no
I remember Turin well. As the head doctor for Norway I witnessed our best alpine skier injure his knee at the very first vertical in the downhill race. The injury probably prevented him from winning a medal that day. However, he managed to recover incredibly fast and won the Gold medal in Super-G 1 week later. Many have not been as lucky as this! In the current edition of IPHP, Flørenes et al describe the injury incidence among World Cup alpine skiers, and their injury rate is indeed high!1 (see page 973) This is the first large cohort study to examine the overall injury risk and detailed injury patterns among World Cup alpine skiers during the competitive season. The main findings reveal that the injury incidence for elite alpine skiers was higher than reported previously, in general higher for men than women, and that the injury rate increased with skiing speed. The knee was the most commonly injured body part, with a majority of severe injuries. Notably, as many as 38% of all time-loss injuries caused an absence of more than 1 month (more than 28 days). …
