Concussions in Figure Skating

More links about concussions and figure skaters:

Elladj Balde had 5 concussions in under 4 years, the most recent was doing a mohawk (sounds as if a helmet would have helped here) - https://bevsmithwrites.wordpress.com/2018/01/13/the-miracle-of-elladj-balde/

Joshua Farris had to crowd fund to get surgery to repair his vision after a concussion - https://www.gofundme.com/joshs-eye-and-brain-therapy-fund
http://www.krdo.com/news/local-figure-skater-brings-awareness-to-traumatic-brain-injury/683743822

This was probably the worst skating accident I've seen on TV. During the failed lift, he (as trained) attempted to break her fall

Copied the below from Wikepedia.
On September 29, 1999, Binnebose fell while lifting Handy and hit his head on the ice, suffering a skull fracture and brain injury.[1][2] He had emergency brain surgery and was put in an induced coma.[2][3] His heart also stopped twice but he was brought back and gradually began to recover.[2] Binnebose was released from hospital on November 30, 1999.[1] His accident and recovery was featured on the Discovery Health Channel television series Impact: Stories of Survival. As of 2010, he continued to suffer facial paralysis and other effects of the injury but had returned to the ice and was teaching skating.[2]



http://www.espn.com/skating/s/2001/0118/1023615.html


I vaguely recall a fluff piece about skaters wearing helmets - perhaps after isabell brasseur had a fall. The skaters said it hindered their peripheral vision as well as impacting their balance during jumps and spins. The helmet would add to outside forces on the head during rotations. Helmets only help the outside of the head - not the jarring that occurs inside.

As others have pointed out, reducing the rotations and/or speed would save the athletes, but it would also kill the sport.

My friend's daughter was hit in the head by a softball - fortunately it wasn't a line drive. I believe it was from a foul tip on a ball. Total freak accident. She had a mild concussion and was not allowed to do anything jarring for at least 2 weeks. She definitely had sensitivity to noise and light for a couple of days.

My other friend's daughter fell off a rock climbing wall. Her spotter's finger got pinched which caused her to let loose. The young lady had a concussion and a couple of fractured vertebrae but no paralysis. She's expected to make a full recovery as long as she takes things easy to let her body heal. For the 1st several weeks, she could pretty much only lay there and after a while do quiet things like knitting - any bright images or noise were abrasive for several weeks, reading was a struggle. For a girl who was on track to graduate from Cornell a semester early, she hated doing nothing. About a month afterwards, she could only go to noisy events if she wore headphones that muffled the noises around her. It's been a struggle for her to slow her life down to allow herself to heal ... and she's not an competitive athlete dependent on being able to move.....

So, I can imagine that most athletes probably shorten their recovery time unless there's someone in their lives that are willing to interecede.

I just want to point out a few things about helmets:

- The most effective ones are designed for the sport they're used. So for instance, the argument that helmets are too heavy or reduce peripheral vision are DESIGN problems with individual helmets. They are NOT valid arguments against helmets. Helmets designed for cycling are different than helmets designed for snowboarding, etc etc. A helmet designed for figure skating would be lightweight and allow for peripheral vision.

- They won't protect against all injury but they WILL protect against some. And that's for every safety device. Seatbelts don't protect against all car accidents. Neither do airbags. Or children's carseats. The goal of any safety device is to reduce injury and helmets would do that for figure skating. The fact that helmets won't prevent all injury is, again, NOT a valid argument against helmets.

- The arguments used against helmets in figure skating are the same arguments that were and are used against helmets in other sports. Times change and people eventually become more accepting of safety precautions. This WILL happen in figure skating, it's just a matter of how long will it take?

I think that this is a very important matter that needs to be discussed much more in the skating clubs. I'm heartbroken over Joshua's and Ashley's situations and they are not alone.

My parents didn't allow me or my siblings to skate without a helmet during trainings for a very long time. I am very thankful for that. But I don't recall any skating parent or coach react positively to us skating with helmets. Of course it will be a problem the more revolutions you do when you jump etc, but I think it is unacceptable to encourage children to not wear a helmet when they barely can do an axel (Yes, from my experience it is encouraged). I'm glad that it seems to be more common to wear soccer headgears (or similar) which I also wear when I skate nowadays. But it is not enough. I have not been active in a club for several years now so maybe it has changed. And it can of course vary from club to club how they work to protect concussions/brain damage. But here are some thoughts.

More information to parents about concussions, how to prevent them, how to recognize them, how to rehabilitate from them safely.

Information to the skaters about the same things. No helmet-shaming but instead helmet-encouraging.

And from the coaches, no pressure to come back to skating after a concussion. And no pressure to skate without a helmet.

It sounds so obvious, but I don't know if it is in reality.

Also, I have been thinking of how a better protection could be formed. Because I agree with that there are problems with helmets when a skater is doing more complex spins and harder jumps and so on.

And then I came to think of a Swedish innovation that is a helmet that works like an airbag. It is made for cycling but I'm thinking, wouldn't it be possible to reprogam it to work for figure skaters? Here you can see how it looks and works. https://hovding.com
(hope that this doesn't count as an ad )
Maybe one could make a suggestion to the company?

We have to understand that figure skating is a brutal sport. Its brutality is trying to mask behind beautiful dresses and beautiful music. But it stays there.

I still remember the fall of Zhan Dan in Turin. It was as if the pain was felt through my TV screen. It was similar when I watched some of Anna Pogorilaya's falls.

We were skiing with my 5 year old son in the Alps a week ago. On the very last day when we were returning home we had to take the last surface lift and he managed to fall 50 meters before the top. I decided to ski back with him. The problem was that it had to be a steep icy piste well beyond his skill level. So I took him between my legs and tried to slide down perpendicular to the slope. It worked for a while but at some point he got scared and hanged on me. I could not manage it and we fell on my side. It was nothing compared with figure skaters' falls but it hurt. And I still have a big bruise on my hip. That made my appreciation of figure skaters' will power even stronger to go on after all these falls .

...but wearing a helmet? It will kill the magic. We went to an opera concert today. One Italian tenor was singing Nessun Dorma, the youngest Bolshoi theater opera star Yulia Mazurova was singing Carmen. Skating to Nessun Dorma and Carmen in helmets? May be no music at all then?

I'm an adult skater who got my third concussion on the ice (first one as a kid, second as an early adult, all from falls.) I had a collision with an out-of-control skater during a group lesson and was knocked on my back. I was wearing a helmet but my neck whiplashed on the ice. I laid there for a minute before getting up, but the coach never checked on me. A couple students came over and told me they heard my head crack on the ice. Next day after suffering confusion and nausea at work, I went to the doctor who diagnosed me with a severe concussion and whiplash. The doctor told me the helmet can't prevent concussions but did prevent me from having a skull fracture. The force of the impact on the ice was that strong.

Recovery took several months (even though I was only allowed two days off work). I had headaches, nausea, got carsick easily, was very cranky. Scariest thing was that I lost the ability to spell. I'm a writer. I can spell perfectly. But in the days and weeks after, everything I wrote was jumbled. I'd look at it, I'd know it was wrong, but I couldn't tell you how to fix it. I wrote things and then my coworkers edited the mistakes.

I'm fine now and still skate (did 2 hours and a lesson yesterday!) but I cringe when I see kids hit their heads on the ice and no one takes heed. Concussions are NOT to be messed with. Our sport needs to take this seriously and develop a concussion protocol for all teachers to be mindful of head impacts on the ice and to identify a plan of action after a potential head impact.

[email protected] said:

...but wearing a helmet? It will kill the magic. We went to an opera concert today. One Italian tenor was singing Nessun Dorma, the youngest Bolshoi theater opera star Yulia Mazurova was singing Carmen. Skating to Nessun Dorma and Carmen in helmets? May be no music at all then?

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omg like totally

protective head gear, like, doesn't match my sequins at all

[email protected] said:

...but wearing a helmet? It will kill the magic.

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Um... pretty sure we're all talking MOSTLY about helmets during practice, not competition or performances. We're talking about using helmets the way skaters use pads - to protect during PRACTICE. This is for the majority of time athletes spend on the ice.
So... no magic killed.

If nothing else, use of helmets during the 'learn to skate' period will strengthen skater's necks which can prevent some injury.

Helmet use during 'learn to skate' also serves as warning to adults and teen skaters that the sport IS dangerous. When people constantly see that figure skaters don't wear helmets and they don't grimace during falls, it creates the perception that this sport is not dangerous, which leads to people taking bigger risks than they would if they truly understood the stats and the danger.

farornaskonung said:

I think that this is a very important matter that needs to be discussed much more in the skating clubs. I'm heartbroken over Joshua's and Ashley's situations and they are not alone.

My parents didn't allow me or my siblings to skate without a helmet during trainings for a very long time. I am very thankful for that. But I don't recall any skating parent or coach react positively to us skating with helmets. Of course it will be a problem the more revolutions you do when you jump etc, but I think it is unacceptable to encourage children to not wear a helmet when they barely can do an axel (Yes, from my experience it is encouraged).

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Agree. I make my son wear protective head gear and it started with a helmet. He really stood out and there were lots of comments about it. Negative comments. I even had a coach (not my son's coach) try to convince me to remove the helmet - all his arguments were utterly illogical. It was insane. He basically said, 'He's going to get a concussion eventually so don't postpone the inevitable.' Seriously, that was what he was saying!

(My son abandoned another sport before he got serious with figure skating BECAUSE of a collision with another kid and a resulting concussion. I don't want him abandoning figure skating too!)

Every rink is different and I've seen some rinks that require head protection for beginner skaters but most still don't require it or even encourage it. Many implicitly discourage it and as I said, some even explicitly discourage helmet or protective headgear use.

All that said, every coach should also teach 'how to fall' early on and repeat that lesson as the jumps get harder and harder. My son's coach had a whole lesson dedicated to falling but I haven't seen other coaches do that.

VegMom said:

Um... pretty sure we're all talking MOSTLY about helmets during practice, not competition or performances. We're talking about using helmets the way skaters use pads - to protect during PRACTICE. This is for the majority of time athletes spend on the ice.
So... no magic killed.

If nothing else, use of helmets during the 'learn to skate' period will strengthen skater's necks which can prevent some injury.

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I would agree about "learn to skate period". It's the standard now to wear helmets by skiing kids.Skating might have this standard introduced as well. At the more advanced levels practicing triples in helmets may be tricky. Then it's not only about "magic".

mrrice said:

That is exactly the fall I was thinking off. Even with a helmet, the "Impact" of falling onto solid ice from the extended arms of her partner would not have saved her from a concussion. It might have saved her from a cut but, that's it. That's the problem with concussions, the lack of blood..........There's a saying in American football....."He Got His Bell Rung" It basically means that a player has been hit so hard in the head that he doesn't know where his is. However, because they're not bleeding, the trainer rarely checks them out.

Here's a 5min clip from a documentary called "Bell Rung" it discusses head injuries, concussions and the dementia that they can cause later in life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU2yWKbKawc

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There is a concussion protocol they follow in football now after hits like that. They at least appear to be taking it seriously.

brightphoton said:

I don't think Evan would have drawn attention to his concussions if they were as minor as scratching his knee.

Besides, the main danger of concussions isn't immediate death. It's lots of cognitive function, having the memory of an 80 year old Alzheimer patient when you're 40, short attention span, sudden personality changes, like becoming more quick to anger, prone to addictive behavior, combative.

I wonder if Debi Thomas ever had a concussion. Her grades at medical school weren't that good, I heard, and after graduation, she went from job to job to job. Now she's erratic and showing odd behavior. It's similar to the behavior of retired football players with brain trauma ...

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She's been diagnosed with bipolar, which could also cause these issues. She contests the diagnosis.

Here's an interesting new study about concussions vs. hits to the head, and their link to CTE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-1030am:homepage/story&utm_term=.d63bd75a7c85

Sabrina said:

I don't think figure skating (singles) is prone to concussions. Most of the falls don't end up with any head hitting. There are so many falls we have watched in figure skating, and the worst i've seen was Anna Pogorilaya and the American guy (don't remember his name) hitting the boards when falling from a quad at Sochi Olympics. As bad as they looked there were no head hitting concussions in those falls. At least professional skaters look they have some sort of training in how to fall...For the risk reason backward salto/flick flacks are forbidden in figure skating competitions.
Pairs and dance are different. Anyway there are many other sports where the risk of concussion is huge.

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Ashley is a singles skater and so was Rachel and concussions have affected them severely.

The rib cap I mentioned earlier isn't slowing down my kid from learning doubles. It's very lightweight and thin. It has a strap so it won't fly off during fast spins. Granted, it's not a helmet, but it does offer some head protection if he falls.
I imagine that future figure skating helmets will be similar to a rib cap in size and weight.

http://www.ribcap.ch/en/shop/

moonvine said:

Ashley is a singles skater and so was Rachel and concussions have affected them severely.

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Yeah, if you go through this thread, MOST of the examples are singles skaters:
Ashley Wagner
Evan Lysacek
Rachael Flatt
Josh Farris
Elladj Balde

That doesn't mean most of the people who get concussions are singles skaters. Perhaps pairs get more.
But just looking at the specific examples of high profile skaters who have come forward with something to say about concussions, it's mostly singles.
And when you read their stories about it, many fell during practice doing basic things, like

moonvine said:

Ashley is a singles skater and so was Rachel and concussions have affected them severely.

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Yes, but those are just people who publicly talk about it. Skating needs studies on injuries overall, across the board, so we have data on it.

VegMom said:

The rib cap I mentioned earlier isn't slowing down my kid from learning doubles. It's very lightweight and thin. It has a strap so it won't fly off during fast spins. Granted, it's not a helmet, but it does offer some head protection if he falls.
I imagine that future figure skating helmets will be similar to a rib cap in size and weight.

http://www.ribcap.ch/en/shop/

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And do these prevent whiplash concussions? (I'll answer it for you: no).

Saying that helmets will fix everything is an extremely short-sighted view because it overlooks the massively more significant danger of whiplash concussion (Joshua's main issue). The problem is that there's no real effective way to prevent whiplash concussion short of trussing skaters up in motorsport-style HANS devices (and even those aren't entirely effective as they only restrict forward-to-backward movement, not side-to-side movement).

Yeah, if you go through this thread, MOST of the examples are singles skaters:
Ashley Wagner
Evan Lysacek
Rachael Flatt
Josh Farris
Elladj Balde

That doesn't mean most of the people who get concussions are singles skaters. Perhaps pairs get more.

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Ice dancers aren't immune either. Gabriella Papadakis slipped on a simple practice step in 2015 and ended up with a concussion that kept her off the ice for about two months, kept her and Guillaume out of the whole first half of the 2015-16 season, and meant she had to basically retrain her brain so she could move without pain and dizziness again. And she still suffered residual headaches for months after that. As in any sport, any kind of impact involving the head carries risk.

karne said:

And do these prevent whiplash concussions? (I'll answer it for you: no).

Saying that helmets will fix everything is an extremely short-sighted view because it overlooks the massively more significant danger of whiplash concussion (Joshua's main issue). The problem is that there's no real effective way to prevent whiplash concussion short of trussing skaters up in motorsport-style HANS devices (and even those aren't entirely effective as they only restrict forward-to-backward movement, not side-to-side movement).

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As with football, I don't believe helmets are the answer. Whiplash, repetitive small hits, and landing on the spine/hip all cause concussions or sub-concussions. (Not to mention that doing any sort of skating outside of basic skills wth a helmet is probably not logistically a thing unless you find a way to suction cup them to the body and make them light enough that they do not make the skater top-heavy).

Also TBI (traumatic brain injuries) and CTE aren't the same. Brain injuries are acute injuries (such as Gabriella's, mentioned above), whereas CTE is a degenerative disease that is caused by repetitive head trauma.

To be completely honest, I don't think there is anyway to completely *prevent* concussions and other head injuries in sports, short of not doing sports. What is more important is having athletes/coaches understand the symptoms and treatments, and take them seriously as injuries, as well as continuing to develop technology to aid us in this. Is that not to say that sports equipment cannot get better- it is part of the sophistication of technology!

(BTW, I'm finishing up a masters in the sports med field, and I'm hoping to work in a concussion program for my PhD... I find this stuff fascinating, and I have dealt with concussions personally).

karne said:

And do these prevent whiplash concussions? (I'll answer it for you: no).

Saying that helmets will fix everything is an extremely short-sighted view because it overlooks the massively more significant danger of whiplash concussion (Joshua's main issue). The problem is that there's no real effective way to prevent whiplash concussion short of trussing skaters up in motorsport-style HANS devices (and even those aren't entirely effective as they only restrict forward-to-backward movement, not side-to-side movement).

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OMG
Please go back and read the thread because no one who is recommending helmets is saying "helmets will fix everything." We have be very clear!
I specifically said:

Helmets won't protect against all injury but they WILL protect against some. And that's for every safety device. Seatbelts don't protect against all car accidents. Neither do airbags. Or children's carseats. The goal of any safety device is to reduce injury and helmets would do that for figure skating. The fact that helmets won't prevent all injury is, again, NOT a valid argument against helmets.

and

If nothing else, use of helmets will strengthen skater's necks which can prevent some injury.

and

Helmet use also serves as warning to adults and teen skaters that the sport IS dangerous. When people constantly see that figure skaters don't wear helmets and they don't grimace during falls, it creates the perception that this sport is not dangerous, which leads to people taking bigger risks than they would if they truly understood the stats and the danger.

VegMom said:

OMG
Please go back and read the thread because no one who is recommending helmets is saying "helmets will fix everything." We have be very clear!
I specifically said:

Helmets won't protect against all injury but they WILL protect against some. And that's for every safety device. Seatbelts don't protect against all car accidents. Neither do airbags. Or children's carseats. The goal of any safety device is to reduce injury and helmets would do that for figure skating. The fact that helmets won't prevent all injury is, again, NOT a valid argument against helmets.

and

If nothing else, use of helmets will strengthen skater's necks which can prevent some injury.

and

Helmet use also serves as warning to adults and teen skaters that the sport IS dangerous. When people constantly see that figure skaters don't wear helmets and they don't grimace during falls, it creates the perception that this sport is not dangerous, which leads to people taking bigger risks than they would if they truly understood the stats and the danger.

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Actually it won't and it doesn't.

What's going to happen when your kid falls during a competition and smacks his head or gets a whiplash concussion?! He can't wear a cap or a helmet during competitions and tests and him wearing one during practices is just hindering him.

Skating doesn't give these perceptions you have concocted and your so-called solution isn't the be all end all of this.


ETA: The theory with helmets strengthening a skaters neck is the most ridiculous thing I have heard to date. Practicing with a helmet or rib cap or any kind of thing will alter the skaters center and has a better chance of them getting injured when it's off during competitions. Also, it's going to HURT their neck, and possibly cause spinal issues especially if they are developing.

Your statement about skaters not grimacing is a farce because I've seen and have done myself enough grimacing in my lifetime on particularly hard falls. Skating trains you to get up and smile through it though. That's nothing a helmet is going to fix.