Scientific Programme
Sports and Exercise Medicine and Health
IS-MH03 - Recent efforts by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) to reduce the risk of injury in competitive snow sports for the Winter Olympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy
Date: 02.07.2025, Time: 08:00 - 09:15, Session Room: Arco
Description
In snow sports like alpine skiing, big air, slopestyle, or ski and snowboard cross injury risk is high, with severe injuries resulting in lengthy absences from competition. To address this, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) established the Athlete Health Unit (AHU) to reduce injury risk and improve safety. The AHU is initiating projects with partners from science, industry, standard organizations, and national federations to mitigate injury risk. This work is focused on the competition framework (e.g., race calendars or course design), equipment (regulating performance-maximizing equipment that could harm athletes, developing protective gear), and athletes' physical, mental, and social resilience (through injury registration, warm-up/cool-down practices, training and testing, and return-to-sport strategies) as key areas for injury prevention. It employs a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach involving scientists, industry stakeholders, national federations, and non-governmental organizations. Six months before the Winter Olympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy, a symposium will be held to illustrate the FIS AHU's approach to injury prevention and its multi-disciplinary collaboration between international stakeholders combining their complementary approaches. The symposium will feature three leading researchers in snow sports injury prevention, highlighting the AHU's roadmap for reducing injury risk in competitive snow sports and the Olympic Games.
Chair(s)
Matthias Gilgien
Norwegian School for Sport Sciences, Department of Physical Performance
Norway
Speaker A
Lynn Ellenberger
ETH Zürich, Department of Orthopaedics
Switzerland
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Injury Prevention in Alpine Skiing: How Can We Enhance Athlete’s Safety Through Developments in Smart Bindings, Airbags, and Cut-Resistant Undergarments for World Cup Athletes
Introduction In alpine skiing, equipment is crucial for both performance and safety. Given the high number of severe injuries in the World Cup, the International Ski and Snowboard Federa-tion (FIS) faces the challenge of performance enhancement while minimizing risk. To address athlete’s health, FIS established the Athlete Health Unit (AHU), collaborating with scientists, industry leaders, and other stakeholders to reduce injury rates. The AHU’s approach includes a focus on both performance and personal protective equipment. This presentation delves into three equipment projects at various stages of progress, examining their challenges and solutions. 1. Cut-Resistant Undergarment: Implementation Challenges of a Proven Technology Cut-resistant undergarments offer reliable protection against ski edges in falls or collisions. A five-star FIS rating system ensures high-quality protection, but widespread implementation in competitive skiing remains a challenge. After a period of limited progress, with few products on the market, the technology is now set to become mandatory by the 2025/26 season. A signifi-cant number of products have since been submitted for certification, a development driven by dialogue and mediation efforts led by the AHU, as community-driven initiatives alone proved insufficient for broader adoption. 2. Airbag with Back Protector: From Concept to Mandatory Gear This season marks a milestone with the introduction of mandatory back protectors integrated with airbags in World Cup Downhill events. Currently, these systems are equipped with sensors that activate upon impact. Future advancements involving AI-driven algorithms could enable earlier detection of imminent falls, allowing deployment prior to impact and providing a protec-tive buffer for the athlete’s torso and spine. This section of the presentation will outline the jour-ney from concept to implementation, showcasing the technological and safety advancements that made it possible. 3. Smart Binding: A Visionary Step Towards Injury Prevention The concept of a "smart binding" represents a promising future direction in injury prevention. Unlike traditional bindings, which have remained largely unchanged since the 1980s, smart bindings aim to incorporate adaptive release mechanisms. These mechanisms respond to spe-cific fall dynamics and have the potential to set new safety standards in the sport. This section will introduce the project’s initial research, potential design concepts, and the collaborative effort with manufacturers and stakeholders needed to bring this innovation to life. Conclusion This presentation offers an in-depth look at the interplay between equipment de-sign and injury prevention, set within FISs broader safety strategy. Through continuous innova-tion and collaboration with the skiing community, FIS aims to ensure that equipment not only enhances performance but also serves as a critical tool in reducing injury risk in competitive alpine skiing.
Speaker B
Jörg Spörri
Balgrist University Hospital, University of Zurich, Department of Orthopaedics
Switzerland
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Mitigation of Injury Risk in Snow Sports through enhancement of the Athletes� Physical, Mental, and Social Resilience
In various snow sports disciplines governed by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), injuries are relatively frequent compared with other Olympic winter sports. Athlete-related risk factors are a promising key area to address with tailored injury prevention measures. However, despite decades of research, snow sports-related evidence is scarce and is related mainly to injury epidemiology and aetiology. In contrast, only a few studies have focused on developing, implementing and evaluating injury prevention measures. Guided by a tailored mixed-method framework and mandated by the FIS Athlete Health Unit (FIS AHU), an international collaboration of leading scientists and snow sports experts has approached the issue of athlete-related injury prevention through reviewing the current scientific literature, a systematic exploration of current prevention real-world practices and the motivations behind those practices, and four key consensus initiatives on injury registration, warm-up and cool-down, training and testing, and return to sport in competitive snow sports. The first part of the presentation will summarize and scope the current research on injury prevention in competitive snow sports in dependency on contextual factors such as sport discipline, sex and competition level. In the second part of the presentation, a systematic compilation of practical expert knowledge based on qualitative stakeholder interviews is provided. The underlying qualitative studies revealed a wide spectrum of general mindsets, best practices and contextual factors that may inform effective injury prevention. Finally, to translate the current research practical knowledge to the specific settings of snow sports, in the third part of the presentation, the methodology and results of four in-depth consensus processes on the FIS recommendations about injury registration, warm-up, training/testing and return to sport in snow sports will be presented, and the lessons learned from the example of snow sports and the transferability of the underlying methodological framework to other sports and settings will be discussed.
Speaker C
Matthias Gilgien
Norwegian School for Sport Sciences, Department of Physical Performance
Norway
Read CVECSS Rimini 2025: IS-MH03
Mitigation of Injury Risk through Course Design in FIS Alpine Skiing, Ski and Snowboard Cross, Big Air and Slopestyle
Approximately 45% of all athletes participating in World Cup skiing are injured every winter (Florenes et al. 2009, 2012), and alpine skiing, cross and big air slopestyle are among the sports with the highest injury rates at the Olympic Games (Soligard et al. 2015). This leads to socio-economic costs and loss of value for FIS and stakeholders in the sports industry, as well as media value. Therefore, FIS is implementing several initiatives to reduce the risk of injury and unintentional events that compromise the integrity of athletes. Course design has been identified as a major contributor to injury risk in alpine skiing, cross and big air slopestyle (Levy et al. 2015; Randjelovic et al. 2014; Spörri et al. 2012, 2016). Previous research has shown that course design (course setting in alpine skiing, jump and rail section design in big air and slopestyle, snow built course features in ski and snowboard cross) is one of the main factors influencing gross biomechanical variables such as speed, forces, physical load and ground reaction force etc. (Gilgien et al. 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021; Kröll et al. 2016; Spörri et al. 2012, 2016; Supej et al. 2017), which in turn are related to injury risk. ). In alpine skiing, course setting has been shown to be an efficient regulator of skier biomechanics and is therefore probably the central regulator of aspects related to injury risk (Spörri et al. 2012, 2016). Recent research has shown that factors related to injury risk in alpine skiing, such as speed, forces, turning radius, can be manipulated by course setting adjustments (Gilgien et al. 2020, 2021; Spörri et al. 2012). In ski and snowboard cross, studies have shown that course design has different effects on injury risk for women and men, ski and snowboard. (Rieder 2022, Brusveen 2023) While the genders always compete on the same course, skiing and snowboarding do so occasionally, placing very high demands on the course builders who have to balance the course design to make it safe and challenging for each of the user groups. Similar relationships were found for big air and slopestyle, where women and men, ski and snowboard always compete on the same courses and jumps, placing high demands on the skills of course designers to meet these different needs for safety and attractive competitions for athletes and spectators (Linløkken et al 2024, in press). Since course design has been identified as an important factor influencing both injury risk and sporting challenge, and as the FIS regulates course design, the FIS AHU and the IOC have initiated and implemented a number of scientific projects in Alpine Skiing, Cross and Big Air, and Slopestyle to help course builders reduce injury risk through the improvement of course design using technology and scientific methods. In this presentation, the researcher who has conducted most of these projects over the last decade will provide insights into published and unpublished work on course design.