Canadian freestyle skiing champ in coma after crash
Posted Jan 11, 2012 7:39 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Veteran halfpipe skier Sarah Burke is fighting for her life after a training crash Tuesday afternoon in Park City, Utah.
She was flown to Salt Lake City in critical condition and remains in a coma.
Powder Magazine reports the Canadian freestyle champ was training with other members of the Monster Energy team for the upcoming Winter X-Games in Aspen, Colorado.
According to witness accounts, she had just landed a trick off of the wall on her feet at the bottom of the pipe, but then ‘whiplashed’ over onto her side.
She had to be revived on the hill before being flown to hospital after rescue workers inserted a breathing tube.
Burke’s husband, fellow pro-skier Rory Bushfield, sent out a tweet Tuesday night asking if anyone had a private jet to fly himself and his mother-in-law to Utah.
CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, Peter Judge, says officials are mystified as to what might have happened.
“Apparently from what we heard, it didn’t look like it was that severe a fall but obviously she must not have hit the right way,” he says.
The 29-year-old from Ontario is one of the most decorated women in freestyle skiing.
She is a four-time Winter X-Games champion, and fought for years to get the superpipe included in the Olympics, where she could be a medal favourite at the 2014 Games in Russia.
