It was one of those moments when everything dried up in one fell swoop: the high-speed frenzy of the ski racer, the cheerfulness of the people at the finish. Matthias Mayer had just dropped it on one of the many waves of the treacherous Saslong slope in Val Gardena and catapulted it onto his back, onto hard snow. Soon all you could hear was the rattling of the rescue helicopter. Then the first rumors that Mayer was doing well, before the sobering medical bulletin arrived in the evening: The Austrian, one of the best in his profession, had broken two vertebrae in the impact. The rest of his season: ended.
When the accident victim was still being treated on the piste six years ago, there was a man in the finish area who was suddenly in great demand. He was employed by the manufacturer of the so-called airbag, which had just reached market maturity in the World Cup. The new technology should make a sport on the edge a little safer, Mayer was one of the few drivers to put it on at the time.
And yes, confirmed the man at the finish, this back armor had just inflated a protective air cushion around the athlete within milliseconds before Mayer hit the ground. It was the first time the airbag had deployed in the World Cup. Luckily, many suspected – including Mayer himself – otherwise the fallen would probably have injured himself worse.
Today, this thesis could probably not be won over as many supporters. Conversations with riders and experts suggest that a safety feature once proudly presented by the world ski association Fis is increasingly raising safety concerns (although the manufacturer dismisses such concerns).
The German downhill skiers are currently driving with conventional protectors again
The downhillers of the German Ski Association (DSV) are now one of the largest and more successful teams on the scene, with seven regulars in the World Cup, including the injured Thomas Dreßen and Manuel Schmid. It was their accidents that “started a bit of thinking” among colleagues, says Dominik Schwaiger, the most consistent DSV downhill skier of the winter so far.
Dreßen had dislocated both shoulders in accidents, Schmid fell in preparation for this winter, he also suffered fractures in the vertebral processes. Both anamnesis seemed strange to the drivers: Are the vertebral processes again, like Mayer’s? And the shoulders? When upper body injuries in skiing are very rare?
Full risk, even without a back airbag: Dominik Schwaiger is the most consistent German downhill skier this winter.
(Photo: Jean-Christophe Bott/dpa)
“Of course we asked the manufacturer,” says Schwaiger, “but no one could actually give us a plausible explanation.” So the drivers did their own research, examining the anatomy of the device and conjecturing: “It was a small thing that might have caused such an injury could“, says Schwaiger. Apparently, the oxygen cartridge, which inflates the airbag in an emergency, is installed in such a way that it may press on the vertebrae in the event of a fall.
That couldn’t be proven without a doubt, but if the athletes only have a few remaining doubts while they thunder down the ice slopes at 150 km/h, like just again in Wengen and soon in Kitzbühel – then greater uncertainty quickly blossoms. In any case, the German downhill skiers have been using the conventional back protector since this winter, until further notice. “As long as we feel safe,” says Schwaiger, “it’s okay.” And now?
The manufacturer, the Italian company Dainese, initially left inquiries unanswered. According to reports, the company strictly rejected the assumptions when they were confronted by the drivers and experts: the airbag had been extensively tested, and the injuries could in no way be attributed to it.
It is undisputed that Dainese went to great lengths to bring the airbag to the ski market: the company is known for its protective equipment in motor sports (where the airbags have also been controversial were discussed), but the drivers don’t shake as much there as on a downhill slope. It took the engineers to develop an algorithm that could unequivocally recognize whether a runner was about to lose control or was being lifted off a bump. But when it comes to an emergency, Dainese once promised that the airbag could absorb more than 60 percent of the impact force.
Around six years later, the scene is still divided. In the women’s speed races in Val d’Isère, 30 of the 41 starters wore the airbag, a good number. However, only five of the ten female skiers in the large Austrian Ski Association had recently put on their equipment; for men it was only one of eight starters, as the ÖSV reports.
When the Swiss Marc Gisin fell so badly in Gröden – without an airbag – that he had to end his career in 2018, Beat Feuz, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Max Franz, three industry leaders, still came out as airbag skeptics: too little reliable data, too the protector restricts movements. In skiing, most things have to be subordinate to speed, including safety.
Karlheinz Waibel heads the science and technology department in the DSV, he is also closely wired in the world association Fis when it comes to these topics. He is not surprised that some are skeptical about the airbag. You knew from the start: “The extra safety that the airbag gives you doesn’t protect you against the biggest risk in ski racing – serious knee injuries.”
If there are still slight doubts about safety, says Waibel, “it will of course be difficult”. And vertebral injuries are actually “extremely rare” in skiing, and he only knows of such occurrences in the less rapid technical disciplines: if a driver falls during training without a protector and hits a gate pole with his back. So it’s hardly surprising that athletes prick up their ears when several vertebrae suddenly break within a short period of time.
“Perhaps,” says Waibel, “you have to rethink the FIS in general if you want to increase safety.”
However, Waibel points out that such injuries may not always be recorded “because they happened in falls that had many effects – the vertebral injury may not be mentioned at all”. Some doubts about the airbag, he says, have also proven to be unfounded. False trips, for example, which “are the absolute exception”. He thinks it’s advantageous “that we have a feature that also mitigates this risk”.
Either way, recent events haven’t made it any easier: mandating the airbag for everyone, as the manufacturer still wants it to be. Strictly speaking, the drivers do not even have to wear standard back protectors, because these are not as standardized as helmets, and the Fis leaves the choice to each driver for reasons of liability. “Perhaps,” says Waibel, “you have to rethink the FIS in general if you want to increase safety.”
The first back protectors, he remembers, didn’t appear because they promised more safety – but because the Italians found out in the early 1990s that it was aerodynamically advantageous to wear a protector on your back when crouching. To this day, however, the Fis often write complicated sets of rules, according to which protective measures should not bring any aerodynamic advantages.
Waibel believes that an airbag that not only protects, but also increases speed a little – it would certainly have no problems with acceptance: “Of course everyone wants to wear it.”