Sarah Burke Still in Coma: Is Freestyle Skiing Too Dangerous?

As fans wait to hear the results, however, some are viewing her injuries, and the crash itself, as enough reason to re-examine freestyle skiing, and to question whether or not the extreme sport is too dangerous for athletes, especially now that the Olympics Committee has added the sport to its roster for 2014.

Follow us

'There's a desire to push the envelope.'

When the International Olympic Committee announced last spring that it would add freestyle skiing or "freeskiing" to the 2014 Sochi Games, reaction from the sports world was mixed, largely because they fear about the lengths to which freeskiers go to push the boundaries of their sport.

Now that one of the world's most famous freeskiers lies in a coma, recreational and professional freeskiers are worried that Burke's injuries could cause a backlash against the relatively new sport. Nor do they deny that freeskiing can be incredibly risky: that one of the sport's selling points.

"There's a desire to push the envelope," said Jeff Schmuck, managing editor of Newschoolers.com and a recreational freeskier. "Sarah has been pushing the envelope for years."

'It's progressing almost at a logarithmic rate.'

Freeskiing was born when a group of skiers in the 1990s, most of them from Canada, wanted to break away from mainstream ski maneuvers and avoid stringent rules and equipment requirements.

But the breakout ski style, while it promotes individuality and expression, is also known for its dangers. And Sarah Burke's injuries, though they are the most recent, are not unusual.

"This is the fourth time I've been through it, with friends getting similar injuries," Schmuck told The Star. One of those friends was American freeskier C.R. Johnson, who recovered from one serious head injury only to die from another one five years later.

Finnish slopestyle competitor Pekka Hyysalo is another. Like Burke, he was placed in a medically induced coma, and although he survived the crash, he suffered career-ending brain injuries from his accident last winter.