Snowboarding Wipeouts
Snowboarding is a very popular winter sport that boasts of a fan following of more than 7 million people worldwide and owing to its popular appeal; it had been included in the winter Olympic Games from 1998 onwards.
People of all ages, especially youngsters are attracted to this game mainly because of the thrill factor and the additional excitement, exhilaration and adrenaline surge it guarantees.
It is a difficult sport that involves the performance of twists, turns, twirls, flips, switches, jibs, scream, big air, and other such stunts. And pulling off these risky stunts requires a lot of skill, practice and expertise.
Snowboarding without a few falls is a utopian idea. Everybody, from amateurs to professionals have learnt the ropes of snowboarding by falling over thousands of times and ending up with nicks, cuts, grazes and small wrist injuries.
In fact, experts in snowboarding training colleges/classes will teach you how to fall correctly, concentrating the weight of the body on the forearms, in order to minimize injury or breakage of wrists/knees/ankles. Thus it is clear from all these that falls, wipeouts, injuries and other such things are indispensable parts of this adventure sport.
The high chances of injuries varying from high impact crashes to innocent little slips and falls may be attributed to the extreme nature of the sport. Beginners who have just started out are the most susceptible to wipeouts, falls and injuries in spite of the fact that they keep themselves confined to moves and tricks less risky in nature than those practiced by advanced learners.
Successful pulling off of tricks and flips requires lots of balance, control, stability and confidence. Beginners are obviously lacking in these. As a result, they often lose their balance and fall down because they have not yet learned the trick of sustained stable stance on their spanking new snowboards.
You would be surprised to know that a snowboarding buff experiences 25% wipeouts/injuries/falls during his first brush with snowboarding and the first season of snowboarding accounts for approximately 50% of the wipeouts.
When a snowboarder falls over, he collides with either other skiers or snowboarders or with stationary objects like plastic/fiberglass dividers/fences/railings/trees etc.
Research has shown that you will get injured at an average of 4 days out of 1000 days of snowboarding. Thus, not only the nature of the sport, but even the rate of injury and wipeouts is similar to that of alpine skiing.