What Are the Most Dangerous Winter Olympic Sports?

The most dangerous sports at the Winter Olympics, which see the highest number of and most severe injuries, include events such as the ski half-pipe, ski big air, ski aerials (jumps), and snowboard and ski slopestyle, which involve athletes flying through the air and making hard landings. Data gathered from the 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 Winter Olympics showed that such events consistently had the highest injury rates among the various events, ranging between 20 and 30 percent. The only sports in the Summer Games with a comparable injury risk are BMX (bicycle motocross) and tae kwon do.

Sliding sports such as lugeing, bobsledding, skeleton sledding, short-track speed skating, and ice hockey saw injury rates between 10 and 20 percent during the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, with a higher ratio of severe injuries (classified as those that took athletes longer than one day to recover from) in lugeing and ice hockey. In contrast, events such as curling, Nordic combined (a Nordic skiing variation consisting of a 10-km cross-country race and special ski-jumping contest), and Alpine supergiant slalom (a speed-type Alpine skiing classification) had the lowest injury rates, of 1 to 2 percent. Athletes have been killed during luge, skiing, and speed-skiing practice or demonstration sessions at various Winter Games. These severe injuries and fatalities have prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to keep safety standards foremost while changing the rules and modifying course designs.

A British Journal of Sports Medicine study reported that more than 10 percent of the participating athletes during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were injured during the course of the 17-day event. Earlier editions reported even higher injury rates. Most large studies, including the IOC’s injury surveillance across multiple Winter Games, reported higher incidence and severity of injuries during the tournament as compared with the Summer Games. Medical experts and coaches point to a combination of factors, including colder weather, a greater number of high-speed and aerial sports, and higher variability in the course environments (the conditions for outdoor winter sports can change significantly depending on the weather), as reasons for this phenomenon.

Four fatal incidents over the years can be linked directly to various Winter Olympic sports, all of which occurred either during practices or demonstrations. Polish-born British luge racer Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki and Australian skier Ross Milne died in separate accidents while practicing during the 1964 Innsbruck Games. Swiss speed skier Nicholas Bochatay died during the 1992 Winter Olympics after crashing into a parked tractor vehicle, used to tend to the snow trails, during a practice run. In 2010 Georgian luge specialist Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in a training accident just hours before the opening ceremony for the Vancouver Games.