Skiing And Snowboarding Injuries

A study by Suezie Kim et al. published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine has shown that injury rates in snowboarders are slightly higher than injury rates in alpine skiers. Snowboarders more commonly injure their wrists, shoulders and ankles while skiers tend to injure their knees.

In skiers the knee accounts for a third of all injuries but female skiers are twice as likely to injure their knees as men and 3 times as likely to strain their anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL). Gerhard Ruedl et al. found that women “showed a 2-fold higher risk of suffering an ACL rupture of their non-dominant leg”. Men had an equal chance of injuring the right or left knee. Ruedl told Reuters Health that women showed greater discrepancies in strength and proprioception (sense of joint positioning)  between their dominant and non-dominant legs. Most female skiers injured their left (non-dominant) ACLs during right turns when the forces on the left (outside) leg were greatest.