Injuries of Competitive Board Sailors

In brief: The authors conducted a retrospective survey of 43 male and 14 female competitive elite board sailors in Hawaii. They were young, healthy individuals, mostly between 20 and 29 years of age. The most commonly injured areas were the skin, feet, shins, back, and forearms. The most serious injuries were mainly associated with advanced maneuvers such as wave jumping and wave sailing. The increased use of custom short sailboards with foot straps for wave jumping and wave sailing may lead to the new clinical entities of “wave-jumper's and wave-sailor's knee and ankle derangements.”