Injuries named: what each study counted, kept apart.

Why the figures cannot be added together

Ski and snowboard injury research uses ski patrol reports, clinic case series and athlete surveillance. The denominators differ too: injuries per 1,000 skier days, per 1,000 athlete-days or per 1,000 skiers. A figure from one study therefore says nothing exact about another place or decade, and none of them is a world rate.

The recreational rates disagree. The research records recreational figures from 0.44 (the Austrian dataset, unconfirmed) through 2.68 (two US areas, 2000 to 2005) to 2.91 (Blackcomb, 1991 to 1992) per 1,000 skier days. Two reviews add their own general statements, both seen only as search-result excerpts and unconfirmed here: one says recreational rates fell from about 5 to 8 per 1,000 skier-days in the 1970s to about 2 to 3; the other says the risk in recreational alpine skiing is generally put at 1 to 2 per 1,000 participant days, with snowboarding about twice that. Each belongs to its own study and era.

Blackcomb Mountain, 1991 to 1992

Macnab and Cadman followed one full season at Blackcomb Mountain using lift-ticket records and ski patrol reports.

• Age. Children aged 7 to 12 had 3.18 and teenagers aged 13 to 17 had 3.34 significant injuries (those needing a physician) per 1,000 skier days, the highest rates of any group in the study.
• Sex. Males had 58 percent (1,210) of the significant injuries.
• Body site. For females over 7 the knee was the most common injury site; for males it was the head and face.
• Head and face. These made up 17 percent of children's injuries and 22 percent of teenagers'; about 22 percent of those involved loss of consciousness or signs of concussion.
• School outings. Young people injured on school-organised outings had a 25 percent higher incidence than on other outings. The authors called for objective research into the role of helmets.

Two US ski areas, 2000 to 2005: terrain parks and other slopes

Brooks, Evans and Rivara compared ski patrol reports from terrain parks with those from the rest of the mountain over five seasons. Of 14,781 injuries analysed, 3,953 (26.7 percent) happened in terrain parks and 10,828 (73.3 percent) on other slopes. The figures below are shares of the injuries recorded in each setting.

Among the injured, 27 percent of terrain-park users and 20 percent of those on other slopes were wearing helmets (unadjusted), so most of the injured in both settings wore none. What the helmet research says is on what helmets do and do not do.

Switzerland: the BFU, 17 December 2024

The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU) published these figures from injury-transport statistics for 2023-24, compiled with Seilbahnen Schweiz.

• Swiss piste rescue services attended to 14,000 people that season, about one fifth of all snow-sport accidents in Switzerland.
• Of those cases, 80 percent were skiing, 15 percent snowboarding, 4 percent sledging and 1 percent other snow sports. The BFU says this split has not changed for several years.
• In ski accidents the knee was the body part most often injured (39 percent). In snowboard accidents it was the wrists and forearms (33 percent).
• More than 90 percent of accidents on Swiss pistes are falls involving no one else.

Germany: ASU Ski, 2024-25

The ski-safety foundation Stiftung Sicherheit im Skisport publishes a yearly accident analysis of German skiers who are members of the German Ski Association (DSV). For 2024-25 it reported:

• An estimated 51,000 to 53,000 German skiers needed medical treatment, a long-term fall of more than 48 percent since the 1979-80 baseline.
• Inpatient treatment rose to 2.03 per 1,000 skiers from 1.73 the season before, and the inpatient share of injuries from 57 percent to 62.4 percent.
• Knee-injury risk rose to 3.32 per 1,000 skiers, the highest in ten years.

The same analysis counts collisions; those figures are on collisions and the codes.

Professional and elite athletes

Fu and colleagues pooled 22 studies covering 12,335 professional skiers and snowboarders, with participant data from roughly 2001 to 2018. They found an overall 3.49 injuries per 1,000 athlete-days. By the study's discipline groups, the pooled rates were 6.83 in freestyle skiing, 3.99 in snowboarding, 3.57 in alpine skiing and 2.70 in Nordic skiing. The lower limb was the most affected region (1.54 per 1,000 athlete-days), with the knee its most frequent site (0.62); the head and neck were among the least frequent (0.31).

The authors warn that the studies varied very widely (an I squared of 97.3 percent), that they found significant publication bias and missing athlete-day data, and that true incidence was probably underestimated. These are rates for professional athletes and do not describe recreational skiing.

What this page leaves out

Several further studies on knee ligament injuries, snowboard wrist injuries, upper-limb injuries and wrist guards appeared in the research only as search-result excerpts that could not be checked against the articles, so their figures are not used. No national injury statistics for France, Canada or the United Kingdom were found. Concussion rules are on concussion by body, and deaths on deaths at ski areas.