Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Objectives To define incidence and injury patterns of International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup (WC) women ski jumpers over three seasons.
Methods Ski jump athletes competing in the Women’s FIS WC were recruited for prospective injury surveillance from 2017–2018 to 2019–2020. Team representatives recruited the athletes annually and prospectively recorded all injuries requiring medical attention. Retrospective end-of-season interviews corroborated injury surveillance. Medical doctors collected and processed the data. The 4-month competitive season was used to calculate the annual incidence of injuries per 100 athletes per season. Injury type, location, severity and aetiology were reported.
Results Athletes from 19 nations were enrolled equalling 205 athlete-seasons. Mean age was 21.2 years (SD=3.8). Thirty-nine injury events resulted in 54 total injuries (26.3 injuries/100 athletes/season). Injuries were mostly acute (83%) and occurred on the ski jump hill (78%). The most common injury location was the knee (n=18, 33%). Crash landings were the most common cause of injury events (70%). Nearly half of the acute ski jump injury events occurred in snowy, windy or cloudy conditions (44%) and/or during telemark landings (46%), and most jumps (96%) were shorter than hill size. One third of the injuries were severe, and 78% of severe injuries involved the knee.
Conclusion Acute injury events occur relatively frequently in elite women ski jumpers, most resulting in time-loss from sport and a significant proportion involving serious knee injuries. Crash landing was the leading cause of injury. This baseline information can be used to guide and evaluate future efforts at injury prevention.
- athletic Injuries
- knee injuries
- sports medicine
- skiing
Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. All data are anonymised and not available for other groups.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Data availability statement
Data are available on reasonable request. All data are anonymised and not available for other groups.
Footnotes
Twitter @larsengebretsen
Contributors SFB and OMRS are first authors and contributed equally to this paper. OMRS, SFB and LE contributed to project planning. SFB and OMRS contributed to data collection. OMRS, SFB, RKM and LE contributed to manuscript preparations and data analysis. LE is responsible for the overall content as the guarantor.
Funding The study is funded by research funds from the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre and funds awarded by the Foundation Fund for the Promotion of Sports Medicine and Sports Physiotherapy in Norway in 2019.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.