GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sarah Burke, 29-year-old Canadian freestyle ski champion, died Thursday 19 January at the University of Utah hospital where she was taken following an accident during training near Salt Lake City a week earlier. Burke had won numerous gold medals in the past five years and CNN reports that she “is considered a pioneer of freestyle skiing and was a major force in getting the ski halfpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi”.
The accident occurred as she was doing a superpipe training run. In a fall after making her jump, she tore one of the main arteries that supply blood to the brainstem and the rupture sent her into cardiac arrest. She was without a pulse and spontaneous breathing while the CPR emergency team worked on her at the site and after being taken to the hospital she had surgery 11 January. The surgery was successful in repairing the artery, but she sustained irreversible brain damage in the minutes following the accident and this ultimately caused her death Thursday, according to the skier’s publicist.
In accordance with Burke’s wishes, reports CBC, her organs were donated to others.
Burke married another freestyle skier, Rory , in October 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Links to other sites: AP, CBC, CNN, Ski Channel, Vancouver Sun
News video, ABC
Wedding video, Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield
A 12-year-old Saudi Arabian girl, married a year ago to an 80-year-old man, is receiving help from the country’s Human Rights Commission in what could turn out to be a test case. Marriages of young girls to older men are not uncommon in some parts of the country and are legal, but a draft law under consideration would create a minimum of 16-18 years. The girl’s mother reportedly filed for her daughter to divorce but withdrew it a month ago without explanation.
