Sochi’s Olympic downhill champion Matthias Mayer of Austria was saved from serious injury in a crash yesterday by the new airbag system developed specifically for downhill skiers by the FIS .
UPDATE: After the initial reports from the hospital that there Meyer suffered no serious injuries, it later emerged that Mayer was operated on and had four vertebrae bolted together to aid the healing process and that he’ll be hospitalized for at least 10 days and out of racing for the season. Mayer is quoted as saying, “It could have been much worse…(without the airbag)” although US racer Ted Ligety posted on Facebook that he was hearing that the airbag made the injuries worse so a similar debate to the helmets one seems to be developing.
Mayer was competing in the Men’s Downhill World Cup race in Val Gardena in the Italian Dolomites yesterday when he suffered what appeared to be a horrific crash and was airlifted to hospital in Bolzano.
It was the same race in which Britain recorded our best ever resort 34 years ago when Konrad Bartelski took silver in the 1981 competition. This year it was raced on a track made of entirely machine made snow, a white ribbon on a green/brown valley backdrop.
Having lost control and spun around 180 degrees in the air, Mayer crashed down the hill backwards at speeds of around 70mph and was not seen to move before being airlifted off the mountain.
However later reports from the hospital were that Mayer, had been wearing an airbag and, although it was too early for full certainty, had suffered only bruising rather than a potential spinal injury.
It was the first time an air bag was deployed during a World Cup race. The air bag system had been developed over a number of years by the Italian manufacturer Dainese who had worked on a similar system for motor cycle racers, in conjunction with the FIS and a panel of racers.
The system was successfully tested by British speed skier Jan Farell for the manufacturers and FIS in Spain last year (above), deliberately falling over to test it. However use of the airbag was voluntary and initially racers have appeared less than keen to use it on race day unilaterally, some fearing wearing it could add vital fractions of a second to their race times, others saying it was too bulky.
But in recent races some racers have started to wear the airbag, including Mayer. He had been wearing it in training earlier in the autumn when he fell and it deployed, as had other racers in training.
