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Reply to "The most dangerous Winter Olympic sports"

3. Weather makes a huge difference

“The last two Winter Games have been in relatively warm environments,” Meeuwisse said. And he thinks that weather conditions can have a big impact on the number of injuries in a given event, particularly in sports like alpine skiing or slopestyle snowboard.

This sort of thing is outside of researchers’ control, he explained, and can cause big fluctuations in injury rates between Olympics, just depending on what the weather was like the day a competition was held.

For example, top-level alpine ski courses are typically carefully groomed into a hard, icy surface, he said. “Because when you’re hitting the corners at those speeds, if the snow is soft at all, it just gives way. And you need it to be cold for that to happen.” If it’s not cold enough, the course could have problems.

Competitors in Sochi spent a lot of time complaining about the “very sh-t” course conditions, as an Australian half-pipe coach reportedly put it. One Olympic snowboarder medal winner called the course “a little dangerous” and said it was leading to falls.

There might be good news here for athletes in PyeongChang: it’s actually cold there. It’s supposed to be the coldest Olympics since 1994.

FM
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