555 MEP002 – ACL injuries limit future top performance in elite ski jumping – prevention strategies urgently needed!

AbstractBackground Ski jumping is an Olympic discipline since the first Winter Olympics in 1924. The little available evidence with respect to athletes' injury profile suggests that the most affected body part is the knee, with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries as a major issue.Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate ACL injuries in elite ski jumpers, hypothesizing that an ACL injury limits the return to top-performance level after an ACL reconstruction, thus highlighting the importance of prevention strategies.Design Retrospective case series.Setting Elite Winter World Cup (WC) Seasons.Patients/Participants Male and female elite ski jumpers from national A-teams who sustained an ACL injury between the winter seasons 2009/10 – 2021/22 and participated in at least one WC competition prior to injury. 18 ski jumpers (11 males/7 females) were eligible for the study.Interventions Data acquisition through research of available and public media reports and databases.Statistical analysis of the following outcomes.Main outcome measurements Analysis of the athletes' performance comparing their WC ranking of 2 full seasons before the injury until 3 seasons after return to competition (RTC), including the duration of the latter.Results The mean RTC time in males was 14.6 (8 – 28) months and in females 13.5 (10 – 18) months.After recovery, only 60% of elite ski jumpers reached their pre-injury performance level and less than 15% reached an individual top-3 placement (top-performance) (less than 10% of podiums compared to pre-injury).Conclusions The hypothesis that elite ski jumpers could hardly return to the highest pre-injury level of performance following ACL injury was confirmed. Therefore, specific prevention programs should be developed to reduce the number of ACL injuries in ski jumping.