1. The Winter Olympics is more dangerous than the Summer Olympics
“Probably one of the more striking things is that we see a very different injury pattern in Summer versus Winter Games,” said Dr. Willem Meeuwisse, a Calgary-based sports medicine specialist and one of the IOC’s researchers on this project.
The reason: winter sports tend to be faster and athletes tend to fly through the air a lot more. This means more severe injuries, he said, because competitors are going at a high speed.
Twelve per cent of athletes in Sochi reported at least one injury, as did 11 per cent in Vancouver. This isn’t that much higher than the rates seen at the Summer Olympics (eight per cent in Rio and 11 per cent in London) but the winter athletes tend to be hurt more badly, Meeuwisse said.
“You would typically have injuries that are more severe in terms of the amount of damage to the tissue, so a fracture versus a bruise or a ligament tear versus a sprain.”