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For rivals in high-speed sports activities, crashes are an inevitable danger, but many elite athletes say it may be powerful to get again on their bikes—or skis—even when their physique heals. Some by no means get well.
In alpine snowboarding, there has hardly been a World Cup race this winter with no helicopter taking off for the hospital.
American Mikaela Shiffrin suffered a perforated pelvis impaling herself as she crashed in a large slalom in Vermont in November, Czech Tereza Nova was positioned in a man-made coma after crashing in downhill coaching at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany in January and Frenchman Cyprien Sarrazin suffered a extreme concussion in coaching in December in Bormio, Italy.
Such crashes are sometimes adopted by an extended rebuilding course of, not solely of the physique but in addition of the psyche.
“When you crash at 130 kilometers an hour (81 mph), it leaves traces in your head. It would just be lying to yourself to say that everything is fine,” French skier Alexis Pinturault, the double mixed world champion, advised AFP on January 22.
Two days later, he fell within the Tremendous-G, fracturing a bone in his proper knee. His season, and possibly even his profession, was over.
Final season he ruptured a ligament in his left knee in Wengen.
‘My physique stated no’
When he received again on his skis, he felt that one thing was incorrect—he felt afraid.
“When it got here to taking extra dangers, one thing in my head was holding me again. My physique stated no.
“We have to relearn that everything is under control, that we can cope. Obviously, it takes time.”
The message is repeated in different high-risk sports activities.
Belgian bike owner Steff Cras additionally wanted time to return again after a multi-rider crash final April on the Tour of the Basque Nation which additionally sidelined stars Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard with damaged bones and different accidents.
Cras stated he narrowly missed a concrete block at greater than 60 kph.
“Another 20 centimeters (eight inches) and I was dead,” he advised AFP.
He broke ribs and vertebrae, suffered a collapsed lung and couldn’t breathe for 30 seconds.
Lower than 4 months later, he completed sixteenth within the Tour de France, however that effort got here at a value.
“I pushed my body too much and I paid for it. I developed shingles,” he stated.
“The head, strangely, was fine. On the other hand, I was scarred by another crash when I hit a spectator in the Tour de France,” in 2023.
“Afterwards, mentally, I was dead. I was afraid to ride in the peloton with spectators along the road. I still think about it today.”
Cras noticed a psychologist.
“The simple fact of dissecting the traumatic event can, sometimes, be enough,” stated Cecilia Delage, a French sports activities psychologist who has labored with Olympic moguls snowboarding champion, Perrine Laffont.
However more often than not, this “post-traumatic stress” requires extra in-depth psychological work “so that the fear of hurting oneself again does not prevail over the desire to perform”.
Racers can wrestle to observe two competing impulses on the similar time.
‘Phantom data’
“We end up with athletes who launch themselves into a descent at full speed on the brakes,” Laffont stated.
“Like when you drive a car on snow. If you master driving without using the brakes, you will arrive safely. If, on the other hand, you put on the brakes because you’re afraid, you’ll go flying into the scenery.”
A number of strategies exist to deal with concern.
“When there is trauma, it means that there is phantom information in the brain that can distort decisions. At 100 kmh it quickly becomes very dangerous. We have to neutralize this ghost,” stated Fabien Deloche, a French psychological coach who works with skilled skiers and cyclists.
The objective is to not remove concern however to remodel it.
“If you disconnect fear, you disconnect prevention. So you have to reshape it and use it to increase your focus and connection to yourself,” stated Deloche.
Many athletes use hypnosis. Pinturault opted for vegetotherapy, which goals to encourage repressed feelings to floor bodily, and meditation.
“The goal is to ‘resynchronise’ the body with the brain to regain control over the trauma,” he stated.
Delage stated it’s essential to “understand the relationship that the person has to fear, risk and therefore death”.
‘Worry of dying’
She stated the roots can return to childhood and even the second of delivery “which may have gone badly”.
“I had a case the place the athlete was very afraid of head trauma and did not perceive why. After half-a-dozen periods, he had a flash. He remembered that, as a toddler, he had hit his head on a rock within the sea and seen himself die.
“It was a memory he had completely forgotten. The practice of sport reactivated his fear of dying.”
After the foundation of the concern is recognized and handled, psychological preparation can start.
The Spanish rider Enric Mas grew to become petrified after three falls in shut succession. He managed to “get out of the hole” with the assistance of a psychologist and a specialist downhill coach who made him descend mountain passes in Andorra for a complete summer time.
Generally, remedy doesn’t work.
Antoine Deneriaz, Olympic downhill champion in 2006, by no means recovered from a crash in Are, Sweden, simply three weeks later.
When he awoke within the hospital, he was “very scared”. That was the start of his ordeal.
He raced “with the handbrake on” and felt “permanent stress” that typically made him “cry in the middle of a meal.”
“At the end of my tether,” he ended his profession a yr later.
Pierre Latour, a 31-year-old French bike owner, is considering quitting saying he has been “scared to death” on descents since a heavy crash in 2019.
He has tried all the things: psychologist, hypnotist, psychological coach, Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing, downhill coach, and even a healer. Nothing helps.
“It feels good for a while but at the slightest upset, everything explodes in my head, like an alcoholic touching a drink,” he advised French day by day Le Parisien in 2023.
Deloche stated each case is completely different.
“Some people can perfectly accept the risk. Others decide they can’t take the stress anymore. It’s eating them up. They say to themselves: ‘I came here to have fun with my friends, and now I find myself crapping my pants every day. I’m sick and tired of playing the good guy’, and they stop.”
The psychological harm turns into “like a fracture that won’t heal, that mends as best it can and bothers you for life,” stated Delage.
‘Self-sabotage’
Some resist psychological therapy, Delage stated. “When he considers that we’re treading on too slippery a floor, that is going to upset him an excessive amount of, and he shuts all the things down, as a psychological protection mechanism.
“By exploring the accident, we realize that there may be self-sabotage. I had a cyclist whose fear was not so much of hurting himself as of being yelled at by his father. To have his head ripped off by his old man asking: ‘Have you been an idiot again?’ The trauma is not always what we think it is.”
In motorsport too, velocity and hazard are a part of the drivers’ day by day life.
“We have been aware of the danger since we were very young,” stated Australian Method One driver Daniel Ricciardo.
“But,” he added, “our sport has also become much safer over the years.”
The introduction of the halo, a bar above the driving force’s head, saved French driver Romain Grosjean in 2020 when his automobile crashed into a security barrier earlier than catching fireplace.
In a automobile, “we are in a security cell”, French rally driver Adrien Fourmaux advised AFP.
A childhood mountain bike fanatic since childhood, he selected rallying as a result of it was “less dangerous”.
Impressed by the expertise of motor sports activities, snowboarding and biking are enthusiastic about tips on how to enhance the protection of athletes and set in movement a virtuous dynamic: fewer falls, fewer accidents and fewer concern.
© 2025 AFP
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Elite athletes can wrestle to heal hidden crash scars (2025, February 7)
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