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Crash and burn: Going fast can win an Olympic medal or send you to the hospital

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) USA's Patricia Mangan crashes while competing in the Ladies' Giant Slalom at Yongpyong Alpine Centre during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.

Pyeongchang, South Korea • The giant slalom is one of the more technical, and therefore one of the lowest-speed ski races in the Olympic Games. Even so, American Tricia Mangan probably was cruising in excess of 20 mph this week when she lost control and crashed into a group of photographers, sending bodies and equipment flying through the air.

Ouch.

Mangan was able to ski away from the wreckage and, from the sound of things, she would be willing to do it all again.

Skiing-wise, I’m happy to lay it all on the table,” Mangan said. “Obviously I’m super bummed to crash, but I actually think I was skiing OK. I was glad I was going for it.”

Welcome to the 2018 Winter Olympics, where competitors are putting everything on the line — and that means going bigger, faster and, in some cases, more dangerously than ever before.

The risks are inherent, obvious and on display at every Olympic venue. Austrian snowboarder Markus Schairer fractured his neck in a hard fall. American snowboarder Rosie Mancari reportedly injured both her Achilles tendons during training. There are bruised hips, injured ankles and blown-out knee ligaments. And there are reminders of how closely competitors flirt with true peril.

After watching her teammate Emily Sweeney slide out of control and crash on the luge track — a truly frightening spectacle — Summer Britcher had a hard time getting ready for her own run.

That was really hard,” she said. “… I’ve never been so relieved as I was when I saw her get up and walking.”

Shaun White caught an edge and crashed trying a “cab double cork 1,440” in October. He caught the edge of his snowboard on the lip of the halfpipe after four rotations in the air. His face split open and blood darkened the snow. White recalls his coach refusing to look directly at him as he was helped out of the pipe to a medical helicopter for emergency surgery.

White needed 62 stitches and said there were times he didn’t recognize his own face in the mirror. He still opted to get back on a board.

Stepping out on the snow again means I’m willing to let this happen to myself again,” he said after his gold medal run last week. “It’s a big decision.”

White landed the trick that hospitalized him in a competition leading up to the Games, but he’d never attempted to combine back-to-back 1,440-degree spins until his second run in the Olympic finals.

The reason?

It’s dangerous. Quite frankly, it’s dangerous,” said J.J. Thomas, White’s coach and a former Olympian himself. “The moves are so dangerous now it’s not like you can practice them every day like you used to.”

White used to be able to practice competition-winning runs every day, landing back-to-back 1,080 spins and double-flips.

But these moves are different,” Thomas said. “The consequences are so high. It’s a risk-reward thing. We had to wait for game time.”

Aerialist Ashley Caldwell, who calls Park City home, is one athlete who wants to push her competitors to new heights. No other woman in her event is doing tricks as big as often. All the same, Caldwell has worked with a sports psychologist to prepare her mentally for the multiple flips and rotations she does while flying some 50 feet in the air.

It’s still scary out there,” she said. “The guys on our tour who’ve done these tricks for 10 years are still scared, but that fear is decreasing. The fear has decreased from, ‘Am I going to land on my head?’ to ‘I’m not going to nail this’. It’s more performance-based fear than fear for my life.”

Caldwell still crashes — too often for some. But she says she has spent time visualizing her jumps and finding ways to get excited about her sport — even if she’s scared.

I want to overcome that fear and change it to a thrilling, excited, awesome feeling,” she said, “instead of an oh-dear-God-I’m-going-to-die feeling.”

The snowboarders who will compete in the first-ever Olympic big air event this week know a thing or two about that. The premise is obvious enough: Snowboard down a hill, jump off a huge ramp and try to do as difficult and stylish a trick as possible. No sport embodies the “go big or go home” ethos better. And that can come with consequences.

U.S. snowboarder Julia Marino was at an event in New Zealand last year and lost control as she took flight. She barrel-rolled through the air as she tried to prepare for a crash landing.

I had no idea where I was in the air,” she recalled. “I swear I thought those were my last seconds on Earth.”

Pyeongchang Olympic officials say their contest ramp is the biggest ever built, measuring about 160 feet from start to finish, with a maximum slope angle of 40 degrees.

While some riders plan to attempt quadruple flips as they vie for a gold medal, Red Gerard, now a gold medalist in slopestyle, said attempting a quad was not worth the risk.

It’s gotten to a point where snowboarding is just so gnarly. There are so many tricks and spins happening that it’s scary, man,” the 17-year-old said in the run-up to his first Olympics. “… I’m scared to do it every time.”

The sport is becoming dangerous now,” Marino said. “Some people aren’t really noticing, but all the athletes know what can happen.”