Levin L.1,2, Johansson L.3, Westin M.2,4, Alricsson M.5, Werner S.4
1Umea University, Dept. of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation/Physiotherapy, Umeå, Sweden, 2Hela Kroppen Physiotherapy, Stockholm, Sweden, 3Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden, 4Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm Sports Trauma Research Center, Dept of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Stockholm, Sweden, 5Mid Sweden University, Swedish Winter Sport Research Centre, Dept of Health Sciences, Östersund, Sweden
Background: According to the Swedish Ski Association, about two million people are engaged in alpine skiing in Sweden each year. Among this group of skiers, individuals aged 16-19 years are heavily overrepresented. A serious injury can be the beginning of the end of a skier´s career.
Purpose: The aim of the present investigation was to study whether there were any correlations in terms of personality traits in uninjured alpine skiers and those who sustained one severe injury and two or more severe injuries during their study years at a Swedish ski high school.
Methods: In this study the personality of 298 elite skiers at a Swedish ski high school have been
identified based on the Swedish universities Scales of Personality (SSP). The current study was
exclusively focused on so-called "severe injuries" defined as absence from skiing 28 days or more. A comparison has been performed between gender in terms of alpine ski high school students without injuries and those students with a number of serious injuries, respectively, and the general population.
Results: The injury rate was significantly related to stress susceptibility with higher values for the uninjured skiers and the lowest values for the injured skiers with higher injury rates. The male skiers showed increased personality traits of stress susceptability, impulsiveness and adventure seeking and the female skiers showed increased personality traits of stress susceptability, impulsiveness, adventure seeking, low assertiveness and detachment when compared to the general population.
Conclusion(s): It is concluded that alpine ski high school students have some characteristic personality traits in comparison to the general population.
Implications: A notable finding was that non-injured skiers had higher stress susceptibility than the skiers that were injured. It may be important to inform elite skiers and their coaches about risk factors that may arise for clarifying an awareness of the situation and to reduce the risk of injury for elite skiers.
Funding acknowledgements: A big thanks to Hela Kroppen Physiotherapy!
Topic: Sport & sports injuries
Ethics approval: The Regional Ethics Committee in Stockholm, Sweden.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
