Medical services and injury management in Alpine skiing during the Winter Youth Olympic Games 2020 in Lausanne

Abstract

Purpose: The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are an elite sporting event for young athletes aged 15-18 years from all over the world. In the third Youth Olympic Winter Games, held in Lausanne in 2020, there were 16 disciplines and 81 events. In previous reports regarding YOG, injury risk was highest in the skiing events and alpine ski had a high rate, 14% in 2012 and 12.9% in 2016. The purpose of this report is to discuss the rescue organization, investigate the incidence of alpine ski injury during YOG 2020 and compare to previous reports. Methods: During the YOG 2020, we reviewed all alpine skiing injuries from 1 official training and 9 events. 77 men racers from 57 countries and 78 women racers from 54 countries have participated. We calculated injury incidence as the number of injuries in competition, training or in total during the game period divided by the respective number of participating athletes; with incidence values presented as injuries per 100 athletes. The injury rates per a game duration were compared among the each YOG games (2012, 2016, 2020) with use of the chi-square test. The injury rate between men and women was compared using the chi-square test as well.