I’m watching the Golden State vs. Utah NBA playoff game and one of the Utah Jazz players had quite the nasty spill. He was sliding backwards on his butt with his body upright and then somone else basically fell on his head. It looked really bad but he’s apparently OK (he can move his limbs and everything, he’s in the hospital though).
I’ve wondered about this before – I’m surprised a really bad accident like this hasn’t happened before in basektball (huge guys falling out of the air, no helmets, no padding, and the addition of a hardwood floor) or any other sport, really, especially rugby, soccer, or football. I think I remember a story several years ago of a high school cheerleader being severely hurt because her fellow cheerleaders didn’t catch her when she was in the air and she landed poorly but I could be wrong. I don’t think she was paralyzed but I don’t remember much.
As Argent Staley said, Darryl Stingley was paralyzed in a pre-season game.
Dennis Byrd, a football player for the New York Jets, was paralyzed in a game in the early 1990’s.
Two players from the Detroit Lions have been paralyzed, Mike Utley, a lineman, and Reggie Brown, a linebacker.
Adam Taliaferro was a freshman at Penn State when he was paralyzed in a game (I think it was against Ohio State).
There was a football player for the University of Washington that was paralyzed, and later died.
Some of the players (Byrd, Utley, Brown, Taliaferro) will have some function return to the point where they are able to walk again. Stingley was a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.
Risk of spinal cord injury is quite high in both rugby union and league. There are various rules, particularly regarding scrums and tackling, that attempt to lower this risk.
Thanks for the replies everyone. It would appear this isn’t as ususual as I thought it might. I did my own little search and found the case of gymnast Sang Lan, who was paralyzed below her midchest during the 1999 Goodwill Games. I’m sure she’s not the only one for her sport. I shpuld have mentioned gymnastics in the OP, that definitely takes some courage – one little slip or mistake while spinng in the air and…ouch.
When i was in about grade 8, a player on my high school’s First XV rugby team broke his neck during a game and has been in a wheelchair ever since. He was playing in the centers, and made what looked like a routine tackle on a guy running towards him, but he got his head at a bad angle and when they collided it broke his neck.
I hadn’t thought about him for years, but i Googled him after opening this thread, and it appears he is actively involved in Wheelchair Rugby, and was a member of the Australian team at the 2002 Wheelchair Rugby World Championships in Sweden.
In girls’ sports, more than half of the catastrophic injuries - those causing paralysis or death - are happening on the sidelines, in cheerleading accidents.
Some of this is accounted for by the fact that cheerleading is a year-round sport. Often cheerleading coaches are not professionally trained in injury prevention. Often no sports doctor is on hand to treat injuries for cheerleaders, so more participants go directly to emergency rooms. Finally, cheerleading stunts seem to be getting more and more daring.
According to a recent article in the journal Pediatrics, cheerleading injuries have more than doubled in the past thirteen years despite the fact that participation has increased by only eighteen percent.
A fellow called John Farragher broke his neck playing first grade Rubgy League for Penrith in 1978. He stayed with the club and was voted Penrith City’s “Citizen of the Year” for 2007.
Rugby Union keeps mucking about with the scrum rules in an attempt to reduce spinal injuries - the most recent change being to the engagement (when the scrums come together).
There actually seems to be a bit of a code among the front rowers - something that they use to signal difficulties. I read an interview with an Aussie rugby international who gave credit to his opposite number in the scrum during a scare - the Aussie strained his neck and trapped a nerve during a scrum (causing temporary paralysis and a crack in the neck), yelled something - and his All Black oppo stopped pushing, yelled to stop the scrum, and held the guy in position till the collar was on. All was well in the end, but scrums can be rough.
And I seem to recall a Namibian player breaking his neck at a Rugby World Cup match - I guess in 1999.
Used to be a lot worse; the NCAA was founded because of a tremendous number of injuries on college fields. In 1905 alone, 18 college football players died, even though there were only a fraction as many actually playing.