By: AB G
Nina O'Brien, a professional skier for the United States team, violently crashed at the Beijing Olympics, forcing her to have to take a rest from skiing. Fortunately, O’Brien has recovered and is now skiing again.
Nina O’Brien is an American World Cup alpine ski racer. In 2022, she participated in the giant slalom and got sixth place for her first run. Giant slalom is when the skiers have to ski between sets of poles. O’Brien got injured on her second run, and at the final stretch, she got injured. This was very disappointing because this was her first ever Olympics.
O’Brien’s’ thought her first run was “really fun”. She did not see this torrential injury coming her way. At the end of the run, O’Brien said she was approaching the gates so quickly, that she then split her skis. Her knee was twisted and she saw that her knee was pointing in the wrong direction; this injury was clearly bad.
O’Brien laid down on the snow while medics and teammates rushed to her side. They gave her some painkillers and then rushed her to the hospital in Yanqing. “I gave everything I had,” she said, “and maybe too much.”
O’Brien’s Tibia and Fibula were sticking out from her skin, she had broken her tibia, fibula, and talus bones. When she got to the hospital in Yanqing, they had put some metal contraption on her shin. She could only take certain medicines, as China did not have all the different types that Americans had. O’Brien would just have to wait until she returned to her home country to get better treatment.
Once O’Brien flew home, she got rushed to the hospital, and an x-ray showed that the doctors in Yanqing had put metal rods into fractures in her bones. This had to be removed as soon as possible. Dr . Tom Hackett thought that O’Brien would suffer this injury for a while and that recovering would take many months.
After nine months, O’Brien has successfully recovered and she is back on the slopes. Recently she had compete in the World Cup runs and placed 26th. She has now returned to skiing and is extremely happy. “I didn’t cry,” she said. “I just felt stupidly giddy.” Her coaches think she is skiing better than she used to be, which is a surprise.
Sources: https://sports.yahoo.com/american-skier-nina-o-brien-suffers-multiple-leg-fractures-in-scary-crash-at-olympics-040052547.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMOM-oSPF_pglIhXZCaWw9Sx4Qqt2AV1jmqsymBxXQ5VlLz7gBcq0FaxS0cuY6qBZuNUQMNwpBSnkuOtt2uzujw6Vn-QIl6Y88kZi_D-zu9EkuPakKxyIU4yfOJhLXzCqFi8E6MxMUrqn5o5gIw0aWH56ypw87994h-lcObH92EK
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/sports/skiing/nina-obrien-skiing-injury.html