Sarah Burke, Ski Pioneer, Dies From Injuries

By: Pat Prescott
01/20/2012 11:02 AM ET

29-year-old skier Sarah Burke died Thursday, 9 days after suffering a head injury from crashing during a training run in Utah on a superpipe.

Back on January 10th Burke was completing a training run at Park City Mountain resort ahead of next weeks ‘X Games’ when, after seemingly completing a difficult trick without a problem, she landed incorrectly and slammed her head on the bottom of the halfpipe.

The injury caused her to go into cardiac arrest. She went into a coma and doctors performed emergency surgery to repair a torn artery that supplied blood to the brain. However after the surgery her family stated, tests showed, “irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest.”

Considered the best in her sport at what she does, the Canadian was a 4 time gold medal winner at the ‘X Games’ and was headed into next weeks games considered as the favorite to win a fifth.

Sarah was also the driving force behind getting her sport into the Winter Olympics, which will debut in Sochi, Russia in 2014.

David Mirota, the Canadian freestyle team’s high performance director said, “She was a great, positive person for the whole team, the whole sport.”

Source: Sarah Burke