With So Many Brain Injuries Can Certain Sports Continue?

[PeterRS]

There is news today about the death of an 18-year old boxer who was knocked out in a professional bout 5 days ago.  So what, was my first thought? That fact that it was a woman made no difference. If you elect to become a boxer, your head is going to be battered in countless bouts in the ring. For many fighters that will unquestionably have short, medium or long term affects on the brain. You make your choices and take your chances. How many recall Muhammad Ali in his later decades. Mentally alert but increasingly a physical wreck resulting from Parkinson's Disease.

I used to think it was only boxers who are at risk of brain injury. Now we know that this is nonsense. Participants in many sports involving head contact are increasingly coming down with brain injuries. I personally have always disliked American football. To me it is not a sport. It is more akin to all out war. When much of the game involves players crashing into each other, when wearing something akin to body armour is required before you ever get on the pitch, how can that be called a sport? It's more like the trench warfare of World War One! Mind you, the husband of a friend of mine in the USA lives for it, spending 2 or 3 evenings each week, popcorn in hand with the TV tuned to football games.

But then some retired players started behaving strangely suffering from a variety of serous ailments which often resulted in aggressive behaviour and even suicide. This was brought home to me in the 2015 movie "Concussion" which showed how many former players were subject to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and how many will do so in the future. Like Alzheimers, CTE gets worse over time. Many studies are presently being undertaken. For the time being, one in 2017 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that of the 202 brains of players who had died, 177, or nearly 90 percent, were diagnosed with CTE. The NFL has certainly made the game safer, but it remains very dangerous for long term medical consequences.

Now, though, a study conducted for Imperial College, London, has shown that up to 25% of rugby players display some form of brain abnormality. The research was limited to elite players who play professionally, but there can be little doubt that damaging effects will be found in schoolboys throughout Britain and other parts of the world where rugby is part of the sports curriculum.

Most worryingly for most, if only because it is the world's sport, many major soccer players and their families have come out regarding the dangers of constant heading of the ball. When I first heard this, I assumed it was nonsense. Not a bit of it! At least 5 members of the side which won the World Cup for England in 1966 suffer from or did suffer from dementia. 5 out of 11! One, Ray Wilson, suffered for 13 years. Today Sir Bobby Charlton suffers from it. His brother Jack who died in July last year also suffered from the disease. The son of another, Nobby Stiles, informed the media that his father started showing signs of dementia 20 years before his death. Billy McNeil who led Glasgow Celtic to Britain's first ever European Cup win suffered from it for ten years before his death two years ago.

The largest study so far was conducted by the University of Glasgow in 2019. Researchers compared the causes of death of 7,676 former Scottish male professional football players born between 1900 and 1976 against over 230,000 matched individuals from the general population. The study revealed that former professional football players had an approximately three and a half times higher rate of death due to neurodegenerative disease than expected. What the study could not discover were the reasons for the imbalance. Several new studies are underway. In the meantime the Scottish and Irish Football Associations have issued guidelines that children aged 11 and under should not be taught to head the ball in training since children are more vulnerable than adults. This is similar to an existing ban in the USA. UEFA, the European Soccer Association, has confirmed that if ongoing studies find conclusive evidence, it is prepared to ban heading in future.

The ban will no doubt be contested but the facts stare us in the face. Of that World Cup eleven, 46% suffered from dementia. The WHO estimates that the worldwide average for the over 60s is 5% to 8% of the general population. 

Who said some sporta are not war?

https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/58432013 

[caeron]

Our gladiatorial games evolve to get less dangerous, but there is a large audience for such things. And with such an audience, a big enough payday to make people take those chances.

[PeterRS]

4 hours ago, caeron said:

Our gladiatorial games evolve to get less dangerous, but there is a large audience for such things. And with such an audience, a big enough payday to make people take those chances.

I'm not sure I agree. A big payday should definitely not be an inducement to play a sport which may result in what is now known may be a pretty ghastly 10-15 years end of life. This is especially true of children for whom sports stars are often role models. After all, there are dozens of other sports as we recently saw at the Olympics and which we will see at the winder Olympics coming up in a few months where there is far less element of danger to quality of life that American Football, Rugby etc. can have  Stars like Hanyu Yuzuru who is a doubt Olympic Gold Champion in figure skating might only get paid a fraction of what a top American footballer gets paid for events in which he participates. But he is not risking his life on a regular basis. Besides, in an age when individual sponsorship of sports stars is at an all time high, Hanyu still makes tens of millions of US$$s annually in individual sponsorships.

The end-of-season Fedex Golf tournament is presently underway in Atlanta. The top prize in that event is US$15 million. The US Open Tennis now underway is paying out US$2.5 million to the winners. They will also likely to see their sponsorship income increase exponentially. There are plenty of sports where it is possible to make very large amounts of money if an individual works at it without known medical risks

[caeron]

The dangers of American style football are very well known to the players these days. They can retire at any time. Some do. Most don't.

I think that speaks for itself.

My nephew was told by his mother he could do baseball but not football for this very reason.  I doubt that is unusual. Who knows if the sport will fade in the coming decades as more mothers do that?

 

[PeterRS]

I noted that Barrack Obama stated that had he had sons he would not have allowed them to play American football. But I do want to stress that this was just one example in a variety of sports that i discussed. Perhaps it is the most obvious because the long-term medical impact of repeated concussions and mere banging into other bodies, sometimes with head forward, have been known for longer. I had absolutely no idea there was any possible impact from playing rugby (which I could not do at school because I wore spectacles) apart from the banning of dangerous neck tackles. And I had even less idea of the impact of constant heading of a soccer ball until about a year ago which is roughy when this came into the public consciousness.

I started my earlier post by mentioning boxing. This "sport" has been around for centuries, if not longer. As noted "punch drunk" was a frequent description given to those who suffered head injuries as a result. When I was at junior school, boxing was part of the sports curriculum. Boxing after all was thought of even then as a "man's" sport. As such, once a week, several boys had to take part in short bouts. I can still recall one 10-year old being hit hard on the jaw. He collapsed and could not be revived. A doctor was called and he was rushed to hospital. Thankfully he was OK and back at school th next morning. But I often wondered if that one punch might have done something to his brain. Probably not, as I now understand it is the repeated blows which cause the serious problems.

[reader]

There's no debating that participating in any sport that requires collision at speed poses physical risks. Any number of studies have confirmed them. What has not been discussed are the social benefits that accrue to those who choose to accept the risks of being a team player.

There is certainly oodles of money to be made on the professional golf circuits, tennis tournaments and other solo spots. But only a minuscule number of athletes attain these professional ranks. The overwhelming majority are drawn to amateur team sports. In return for accepting the risks, they come to know the camaraderie that can't be realized in other pursuits.

That's why American youths play football, Canadians hockey, British rugby, and much of the rest of the world soccer and a mix of other team endeavors. It's a right of passage for many. Yes, the risks are plain but it's not all that surprising that the need for social acceptance wins out in the end.

We can't always exist in a cocoon of total safety. We can--and should--make sports as risk free as possible through the imposition of rules and codes of conduct but never through bans on participation.

[PeterRS]

20 minutes ago, reader said:

We can't always exist in a cocoon of total safety. We can--and should--make sports as risk free as possible through the imposition of rules and codes of conduct but never through bans on participation.

I agree, provided the authorities do pay attention to the many studies that are now underway, especially to protect children whose brains can be affected more severely than those of adults.

I also accept that all sports have an element of risk, even though these are small. Having just watched the Dutch F1 Grand Prix, I recall that one of the greatest drivers of all time, Michael Schumacher, was skiing when he had a simple fall off piste resulting in his hitting his head on a rock. Although he was wearing a helmet, he was whisked to hospital and has not been seen since. Clearly he suffered a major brain injury in the most unlikeliest of places. A similar and seemingly innocuous accident happened to Natasha Richardson, the wife of actors Liam Neeson and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave. That simple accident resulted in bleeding in the brain which killed her. We all have to be aware of the risks and make decisions accordingly.