In the NRL (Australian rugby league), I see players get up and back into the game after they have been visibly shaken/dazed from a head blow. Supposedly it's the manly thing to do and the doctors must be under pressure to let the players continue playing and the crowd love it.

I'm not sure if there's been any diagnosed cases of CTE with NRL players, but considering the non existent head protection compared to NFL i'd say there must be cases.

A few questions I have are:

How many diagnosed concussions did Mirra sustain while competing at the XGames?

How many concussions did he sustain prior to the existence of the XGames?

How many during training?

I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the lack of a formal statement from the XGames but it seems unfair to single them out.

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Formerly DrD

ESPN is the $50 billion dollar media gorilla. It's a small blip on their radar.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Almost my first thought when the news came out was that this may be the cause.

On numerous occasions there have been threads of extreme athlete's doing things posted in the Lav Room and I and others have commented its increasingly hard to watch clips of people getting their bell rung.

Whilst sports may be taking it more seriously - it was only in the rugby world cup last year that one person was knocked out stone cold and was back in the game (may have been the football world cup - I can not remember, I just remember the story and seeing the clip)

At some point its going to be increasingly difficult for legislators on the one hand to say that parents can not smoke in a car with their kids due to the health implications long term but its absolutely fine for them to allow them to participate in sports which may long term have similarly devastating health effects.

Even the argument that players in the NHL and NFL, or Rugby, or Football who we view as making a choice, have by the time they turn professional and collect a cheque almost certainly had their bell rung to many times to mention.

There really is no positive outcome to this. The physics of it are quite straightforwards, there is no helmet or protection that can be designed that will allow a head to decelerate from max speed to zero almost instantaneously whilst preventing the brain from hitting the inside of the skull. The only way you can prevent it is to not get hit. Helmets might at slower speeds reduce it and they certainly prevent trauma but the concussion issue has not been solved and I do not think anyone has proffered a meaningful solution. Even POC skiing / board helmets with the suspension inside cant prevent a brain which is travelling at 30mph in a skull from decelerating instantly when the skull carrying it stops.

I suspect within our lifetimes we will see the health and safety regulations surrounding many sports change as the knowledge grows about the long term impacts of these injuries.

For the time being though, I can see why ESPN don't say anything, what can they do to make it safer? change scoring but then the attraction of the sport for the masses of seeing huge air's goes away.

I don't follow ESPN or X-Games but after reading your post this morning I was curious about what they were or were not saying about this. When I went to ESPN there were 2 links on this issue in the home page - granted towards the bottom. When I went to the X-Games page there was a story at the top of the home page. Doesn't look like they are ignoring this at all.

Thursday's, 5-8pm GMT.

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

To another point, where is the advancement in BMX helmet design? They're still using the same designs from the 80's, which is to say a plastic shell with some foam.

B

Good post, but you probably have not seen FrontLine's jaw-dropping documentary, 'League of Denial':

In parts, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwVm_9Sfv2I
More at:
http://www.pbs.org/...lm/league-of-denial/

After watching that, nothing will surprise you, x-games, NFL, whatever. Athletes are an expendable commodity, to be used and then disposed of. It does not matter if they are kids or adults. And woe to any scientist that gets in the way of the entertainment or the money train.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
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There's a very good documentary about Freestyle Skiing and the X-Games called The Crash Reel. There has been some serious head injuries in that sport. The big takeaway from that movie for me was that it showed how difficult it is for the athletes that have suffered injuries to stop skiing and competing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2499076/

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Fast-Finishes.com
Triathlon and Running Race Timing
Athletic Event Management

The book league of denial was excellent and the film the crash reel is a lesson in the realities of repeated concussions and their impact on judgement

Perhaps the best way to save these sports is to remove the helmets all together (perhaps that's why we don't hear about CTE in rugby and Aussie football). For every advancement in helmet or other "safety" technology, there is an increase in fatal injuries in that sport. They psychological benefit of safer gear makes you think you are invincible and try far more dangerous things. Skiing is a perfect example. Since helmets have been introduced in that sport, the rate of fatal accidents has actually risen.

Do you think football players would hit as violently as they do if they had no helmet? Would a BMX biker take as many personal risks without a helmet. It seems counterintuitive but the data backs it up.

Likely, no they would not take nearly as many risks.

But would be spectators have watched gladiators in ancient rome if they just thwacked one another with Nerf swords? Nope. People watched because many times gladiators fought to the death.

On tv, impact, injury, and more is what gets the views. And views is what gets the $$$$$$

A sad state of affairs.

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Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
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I think what you're suggesting is a step forward...but don't mistake that for a cure. A few things to consider:

1) As a rugby player, I can share that I've probably (guessing) had 15 concussions, starting at age 15 and going to age 23. You don't hear about the concussions in rugby and Aussie football because they aren't as highly regulated as the NFL - in most non-pro rugby games, there's no protocol, no doctor on the sidelines, and as importantly, no media. Just the athlete and a whole bunch of peer pressure to keep playing. Don't ever think there are fewer concussions in rugby; there are likely more.

2) There will always be a class of folks playing the sport that actually don't care how beat up their heads get. Think Dick Butkus. Some folks just don't have other options in life, or choose not to pursue those other options, for whatever reason. They will play the sport like they have nothing to lose, and they don't.

3) The nature of the sport - I can pick on MMA, NFL, and rugby - dictates that to succeed, you put lots of big, physical folks in a pretty confined space with a mandate to beat up on the other folks to succeed. Collisions are inevitable, and predictable, even if 'managed' or 'by accident'. Removing helmets may help with the intentional collisions, but certainly won't help with the 'accidental' ones, the ones where the person doesn't give a shit, not to mention the non-head related collisions (knees, ankles, ribs, backs, necks, etc) which can be as debilitating as the CTE-types.

Bottom line: If these sports stick, expect a couple things, over time: 1) the people that have other options and value their lives will self-select out, 2) the sports will tweak their rules to optimize the money - regulations- entertainment factor - liability axis every single second of every year, and 3) consumers will never get tired of buying violence, so if one juggernaut gets regulated out of the violence space (think NFL), another will take it's place (think MMA).

Food for thought: Why is the NFL being demolished for CTE, when the entire business model of MMA involves premeditated strikes to the head with no protection? Why is it OK in MMA, but not in the NFL? Hmmmmmm. And more food...why do we ask NFL'ers to wear all this protective gear, when bike racers routinely go 60+ MPH down mountains, ride in dangerous packs with nothing on besides spandex and a plastic lid that's been the same for 30 years? HMMMMMMMMM

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- I do all my own stunts