These Winter Olympics events are most prone to injuries! How to prevent them?

As the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics draws closer, people's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports is growing.

The participating athletes pursue their dreams and achieve self-realization in the Olympic arena...

Sports enthusiasts burn their passion and break through themselves in the world of ice and snow...

Fitness experts are sweating and challenging themselves in the gym...

Let us ignite the passion for sports and support ice and snow sports!

Let us welcome the Winter Olympics together and talk about health together!

Today, members of the Winter Olympics medical support team invite you to experience the speed and passion of ice and snow sports, and tell you how to move in a scientific way to truly achieve "I exercise, I am healthy, I am happy."

The 24th Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing from February 4 to February 20, 2022. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will have 7 major events and 109 minor events.

The competition events are divided into speed (faster), skill (higher) and comprehensive (stronger). Unlike the Summer Olympics, the excitement of the Winter Olympics mainly comes from the pursuit of speed and the challenge of human beings to nature.

Each event in the Winter Olympics has its own unique origin, development history, and sports characteristics. In ice and snow sports, sports injuries are inevitable. The laws of sports injuries also have their own characteristics. For this reason, a large number of medical support staff are active in various venues to escort athletes.

Skeleton

No matter what kind of competition, speed is one of the important factors that determine the outcome. Among the speed racing events, skeleton is called "ice and snow F1".

Skeleton athletes lie prone on their sleds, with their heads forward and their feet backward. The shorter the time, the better the result. Skeleton athletes were disqualified from the Winter Olympics twice because it is too thrilling. Imagine a car colliding on a highway at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour. The injuries and blows to the driver and passengers are fatal. Not to mention skeleton athletes who are head down with only simple protection such as helmets. Skeleton competitions are intense and exciting, and athletes, coaches and spectators outside the venue are all in a thrilling process. If safety is not put first, the threat to athletes in the skeleton project will not only be simple trauma.

sled

Similar to the skeleton is the bobsleigh, the main difference between the two is the direction of the head. Luge, also known as luge, is a sport in which you sit or lie on a sled, hold the sled belt with one hand, and control the sled to rotate and slide at high speed by changing your body posture. It originated in Switzerland and Northern Europe. Athletes hold the handles tightly and are ready to go. When the green signal comes on, they accelerate to start.

Some people think that bobsleigh racing is safe when the athletes' heads are up and they lie on their backs. This is not true. High speed is still one of the characteristics of bobsleigh racing. Athletes slide at high speeds on icy and dangerous tracks. In bobsleigh racing, athletes participating in individual events need to slide four times, and then rank according to the total time of sliding. In other words, athletes face four risks of speed-related sports injuries, and if they are not careful in sliding each time, they will lose the qualification to compete for medals, or even get injured and withdraw from the competition.

Alpine skiing

Among the speed racing events, the most spectacular one is Alpine skiing. As its name suggests, it originated in the Alps. Alpine skiing requires athletes to have superb skills.

Alpine skiing is usually conducted on mountains above 1,000 meters above sea level. The track is 2,000 meters long, the vertical height from the start to the end can be up to 700 meters, and the skiing speed of the athletes can exceed 130 kilometers per hour. Although its speed is not as fast as that of bobsleigh and luge, athletes must maintain their speed advantage and complete complex technical movements, which requires extremely high body control ability, so the probability of injury is no less than the former two. In addition to the dangers brought by speed, athletes can also get injured if they use incorrect technical movements during the competition.

Short Track Speed ​​Skating

Short track speed skating, also known as short track speed skating, emerged in Canada in the 1880s. Short track speed skaters have to complete turns, acceleration, overtaking and other actions on a short track, facing the risk of physical contact with other athletes on the track, and the risk of "close contact" with their own or others' skates if they lose control.

The competition in short track speed skating is very fierce, so in order to prevent and reduce sports injuries, athletes must take safety precautions when participating in the competition, such as wearing helmets, neck guards, gloves, shin guards, etc.

Snowboarding

Snowboarding originated in the United States in the 1960s. It is a snow sports event that uses a snowboard as a tool. Athletes quickly turn and slide down a specified hillside route, or take off from a special "U"-shaped field and perform various difficult movements in the air. Snowboarding requires extremely high body control and strength of athletes because their feet are fixed. Athletes must not only meet the speed requirements, but also perform difficult movements such as tumbling and turning in the air. If athletes cannot control various speed changes and changes of direction, once the body loses control, they will face the risk of falling, collision, and falling.

The above is a brief introduction to the events in which athletes in previous Winter Olympics have suffered the most and the most serious injuries. In the injury reports of previous Winter Olympics, these events were listed as the events with the highest injury rates, and there were even reports of deaths. Because the speed of competition is extremely fast and the protective measures are relatively simple, once athletes are injured, most of them are highly violent injuries. If an athlete falls from a height, the injury is not limited to the knees and ankles, but may also damage the spine and head. In mild cases, the legs are broken and tendons are fractured, and in severe cases, people are killed. In severe cases, there may even be craniocerebral injuries, ruptured internal organs, and fractures of the spine and limbs. These sports injuries require medical personnel to provide rapid and accurate treatment in a short period of time in order to save the lives of athletes from the hands of death.

During the on-site first aid process, the primary task of medical staff is to ensure the safety of athletes. There are five major steps in on-site first aid: ventilation, hemostasis, bandaging, fixation and transportation. It is particularly emphasized that medical staff need to complete basic first aid for the injured within the "golden hour". It can be said that athletes are racing against the limits of human beings, while medical staff are racing against the "god of death".

In the Winter Olympics, the results of the competition are certainly important, but the safety of athletes is an important sign of the success of the event. Therefore, only by doing a good job in the medical support of athletes can medical staff ensure the safety of athletes and their good results.

The winding tracks are the show for the athletes. They show off their skills, style, dreams, and fighting spirit. The medical support team will also go all out to provide solid support for the athletes to compete with peace of mind!

Are you ready to experience the charm of ice and snow sports?

Welcome the appointment of ice and snow, you and I are together!

Original title: "Countdown to the opening of the Winter Olympics! Welcome the ice and snow, learn about the Winter Olympic events | Welcome the Winter Olympics and talk about health"

Author: Associate Chief Physician, Department of Orthopedics, Peking University Third Hospital

Lü Yang, captain of the medical support team for the Beijing Winter Olympics Yanqing competition zone

Review | Experts from the National Health Science Expert Database

Zhao Bin, chief physician at Beijing Jishuitan Hospital

Planning｜Tan Jia

Video Editing｜Wang Junke

Editor: Liu Yang

Source: Healthy China