Any sport that involves hurtling supine down an icy track at speeds up to 90 mph might seem a bit dangerous. But at the competitive level -- which is all there really is for luge enthusiasts -- this sport is no more injurious than recreational downhill skiing.
"It’s safer than it looks because it is a well-regulated and well-coached sport," said Dr. Robert Cummings, an orthopedist in Chelmsford, MA. From his handful of years as a luge competitor, Cummings knows the tracks are off limits to those who aren’t prepared. "They won’t let an athlete overstep his skills."
But Cummings can’t deny the existence of injuries in luge. After all, while doing his residency at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, he was the lead author on the only epidemiological study of luge injuries in the medical literature (American Journal of Sports Medicine, July-August 1997, Vol.25:4, pp. 508-513).
Cummings and his colleagues retrospectively analyzed seven years of injury and illness reports from the U.S. Training Center Sports Medicine Clinic in Lake Placid, NY. Between 1985 and 1992, more than 1,000 athletes took more than 57,000 runs down the luge tracks at Lake Placid. During that time, there were 407 injuries, putting the risk of injury at 0.39 per person per year.
Contusions made up 51% of those injuries, with the extremities and especially the hands taking the battering. Strains, usually afflicting the neck muscles, were the second most common injury, at 27% of the total.
"You can’t tell on television, but the athletes are really doing a lot of steering with their shoulders and their legs," Cummings said. "The neck takes a lot of strain because there are tremendous G-forces bearing down on them."
The main role for medical imaging in the sport is to rule out fractures, Cummings said.
His research showed that while crashes caused 64% of all injury reports, serious injuries were fairly infrequent. Concussions represented 2% of the total injuries, and fractures were 3%, the authors found. The risk of an injury taking an athlete out of training for more than 1 day was 0.04 per person per year. As for Cummings himself, he never suffered anything more serious than contusions.
One caveat: Cummings’ data is specific to the luge track at Lake Placid. All luge tracks are designed to deliver comparable challenges, but since each is unique, there might be a higher incidence of injuries in Salt Lake City. "It may vary with where the curves are located on the track, and the speed build-up prior to those curves," Cummings said.
Cummings is getting a first-hand take on that theory, as he is attending the Games in Salt Lake. In addition to being a spectator, he is serving as a volunteer physician in the Olympic Village medical clinic. "I didn’t make it to the Olympics as an athlete, but I’ve made it as a physician," he said, noting that his luge performance in the 1988 Olympic trials prior to medical school wasn’t good enough to make the cut.
He also admits that it’s probably for the best that he went to medical school instead of becoming a long-term luger. "You can’t really make a living as a luge guy," Cummings said. "They don’t put too many of those on the Wheaties box."
By Tracie L. ThompsonAuntMinnie.com contributing writer
February 12, 2002
Copyright © 2002 AuntMinnie.com
