“How many times do you have to be hit to have the brain of Junior Seau?” said Dr. The question no one can answer, because accumulated brain injury is so hard to measure in real time, is how much is too much? “The real concern is the concussion-like symptoms they experience because of the high speeds and the forces.” Benson compared it to shaken baby syndrome, but for adults. Brian Benson, the chief medical officer for the Canadian Sport Institute in Calgary, Alberta, who has been studying brain trauma in sliding sports for a decade. “The concussions from the major crashes get diagnosed,” said Dr. They call it “sled head,” a term that troubles brain experts because they say it has normalized the classic symptoms associated with concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries familiar to football players and others who participate in high-impact sports. The athletes even have a name for the exhausted fog that even a routine run down the track can leave them in. But Jovanovic’s deterioration and suicide, so soon after Holcomb’s death, have forced it to confront difficult questions with uncertain answers.īrain experts who have studied these athletes say the symptoms most likely stem, at least in part, from years of enduring the notorious crashes, routine head banging, brain-rattling vibrations and strong gravitational acceleration forces that are common in their sports. Only a few hundred people pursue sliding sports seriously in the United States and Canada at any time, which makes the prevalence of these symptoms and the early deaths, which are often related to brain injuries, stark.įor years, the tight-knit sliding sports community has viewed brain injury as a problem for football and other direct contact sports. In recent years, an increasing number of athletes, current and retired, in sliding sports, especially bobsled and skeleton - a sister sport in which competitors slide headfirst on a small sled made of metal and carbon fiber - have said they battle chronic headaches, a heightened sensitivity to bright lights and loud noises, forgetfulness and psychological problems. He was 37.Īnother Olympic medalist, Bill Schuffenhauer, sliced open his wrist in 2016, but was saved by his girlfriend. In addition, Steven Holcomb, who in 2010 piloted the sled known as the Night Train to the first gold medal for the United States in bobsled in 62 years, died alone of an overdose in 2017 after years of depression. The following year, Travis Bell, who competed for the United States in the late 1990s, took his life at age 42. Adam Wood, whose wife taped his anguished calls as his mental health deteriorated, so there would be a record, died by suicide in 2013 at age 32.

He was also the third elite North American bobsledder to kill himself since 2013. Jovanovic, an Olympian, was just 43, but already experiencing the shakes and tremors often associated with Parkinson’s disease. He tied the loose end around his neck and hanged himself. On May 3, Pavle Jovanovic, a former bobsledder, rigged a chain to a crane he and his brother kept in the shop of their family’s metal works in Toms River, N.J.

Death road to canada skeleton