I agree with everything you’ve said about the COC injuries! I’m only a high school student, but I’m in an athletic training & sports injury internship class this year and I’ve helped the school athletic trainers a lot. It’s so frustrating to see that there were some football players missing half of their senior year season because of a concussion, but it’s necessary so that they don’t get a second concussion. It’s terrible to take someone out of the sport they love, but at a high school the athletic trainers have the authority to tell the athlete, their parents, and the coaches that they absolutely cannot participate until their concussion is healed completely- typically if they get a concussion they’re out of practice and play for 3-4 weeks, or until they pass the concussion test on the computer. What the ISU needs is an ISU medical professional, a physician or athletic trainer, who is unbiased toward one country or another and can give emergency treatment and analysis to conclude how severe an injury is and determine if the skater is fit to be allowed to compete. There is absolutely no way that Yuzuru Hanyu or Han Yan should have been allowed to compete, and the ISU should require the computerized concussion impact test or something similar to be passed before the skater is allowed to compete again. What is it going to take for the ISU injury policies to change- a skater getting a second concussion after the first and dying of second impact syndrome?
it's good that high schools recognize the severity of head injuries and we've seen that great strides have been made in other professional sports, too. the ISU is tragically and dangerously behind the times. severe accidents have happened before yuzuru and han but this might be the highest-profile case recently and it was already horrific; it would be absolutely appalling if it takes an accident even WORSE than this to make things finally change. reminder that many elite skaters are MINORS - skaters' ages skew very young and that only makes it even more essential to protect their health, even though it should apply to athletes of any age.
