Current Concepts Skiing Injuries

The practice of sliding across the snow with supportive implements may date back as far as 5000 years ago when early hunters and fisherman used crude animal tusks to transverse snow. Precursors of modern skis have been found in Scandinavia and Siberia and have been dated back to 2000 BC. However, the first written record of skis is attributed to Chinese historical accounts dating to 600 AD. In the 6th century there is written record of an industrious group of Finns using rudimentary skis to increase their mobility on snow to gain military advantage over neighboring tribes. This same skill allowed them to defeat the Norwegians in the 12th century. Competitive skiing seems to have gotten its start in Norway in 1767, and within 100 years it was a wellestablished activity in the Scandinavian countries. In the mid-1800s skiing was introduced to the western mining camps of the United States. Although it gained some interest there, it was not until the Lake Placid Olympics in 1932 that its popularity in the United States began to soar. In 1935 it was estimated that there were approximately 10,000 skiers in the U.S.; by 1946 this number had increased to 100,000. In 1976 it was estimated that there were four million U.S. skiers, with this number increasing to an estimated 14.5 million by 1987. Since the middle to late 1980s the number of skiers has plateaued, with little increase in the total skiing population. (The boom in snowboarding, however, has continued to swell the ranks of those using the ski slopes as their site of recreation.) Today it is estimated that there are approximately 14.5 to 15 million skiers in the U.S. and 200 million skiers worldwide. THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF SKIING INJURIES