Canadian freestyle skiing star, Sarah Burke died on Thursday, due to trauma sustained during a halfpipe training run on January 10 in Park City, UT.
With family and friends bedside, she was pronounced dead by medical staff at the University of Utah hospital.
On the 22’ high halfpipe last week, Burke severely injured herself while practicing a relatively simple 540 “flat spin” – a trick she has performed hundreds of times. However, this day, while coming out of the maneuver, she bounced off the icy bowl and awkwardly struck her head.
“It was more the freak nature of how she landed,” said the Canadian Freestyle Team’s CEO Peter Judge in an AP article. “The angle of how she hit must have been exactly the right way, to create a very bizarre circumstance.”
Medics rushed to her side to resuscitate her from a cardiac arrest, stemming from a torn vertebral artery that caused severe brain bleeding.
While at the hospital, she was placed in a medically induced coma so that surgeons could repair the ruptured artery that day. Yet, she was not able to overcome her brain injuries which were continually monitored by doctors.
Subsequent tests identified that “irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrestresulting in hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy,” according to a statement issued by her publicist, Nicole Wool serving as a spokesperson for the family.
Burke, a multiple Winter X Games gold medalist in ski halfpipe who hailed from Squamish, Canada, was preparing to defend her title at the upcoming annual event next week.
Her passion for the sport drove her campaign for this event’s inclusion in the Winter Olympics slate. The International Olympic Committee agreed, and added ski halfpipe to the Sochi 2014 Olympics schedule.
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