I’m oddly obsessed about the condition of Canadian freestyle skier, Sarah Burke. Sarah crashed during a superpipe training run in Park City, Utah, last week. She fell after landing and hit her head. She has been in a medically induced coma ever since.
Prior to last Wednesday, I had never heard of Sarah Burke. Upon a bit of research, I learned that she has pretty much single-handedly changed extreme skiing for women. She was at the forefront of getting the halfpipe and women’s ski jumping included in the winter Olympics, where it will debut in 2014. She’s also won 4 gold medals in the Winter X Games.
Sarah’s the perfect spokesperson to change an industry. Not only is she drop dead gorgeous, but she’s fearless and talented. She wanted to play with the boys at their sport and she won the right to do so while also creating a path for others.
Women don’t have enough role models like Sarah Burke: someone who puts everything on the line to forge a new path and to fight hard for what they believe in – establishment be damned. Instead, we look to the super rich and famous (whose names I can’t bare to type out). Who more often than not are in and out of rehab and marriages. These starlets who are shoved into our subconsciousness through movies, TV, iTunes and tabloids tend to stand up for nothing but their fame.
It could be that I’m so sad about Sarah because she wasn’t on my radar prior to her accident. I now find myself searching online a few times a day to find out the latest news.
If you’re interested in knowing a bit more about this remarkable woman, this is a video posted last week by the Ski Channel:
Travel Well,
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