One of Canada’s best and most well known freestyle skiers, Sarah Burke, passed away yesterday morning due to injuries sustained while training in Utah. She tore the artery that supplies blood to the brain stem during a training run in the superpipe at a personal sponsor event at the Park City Mountain resort. The ruptured artery caused a severe hemorrhage in her brain and put her into cardiac arrest. She was operated on at the hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. Tests later determined that she had suffered irreversible brain damage, she was put on life support and therapeutic hypothermia was initiated to protect her brain. Following her surgery to repair the torn artery,  she was put into  a medically induced coma, until she died on Thursday morning nine days following the accident.

Today it was revealed that since the accident occurred in the United States, her family is now stuck with a MASSIVE $550,000 medical bill. Personally I think it is disgusting that neither the Canadian Olympic Committee; whom she was a STRONG advocate for, nor her sponsor whom she was training for when the accident occurred have come forward and supplied donations to her family.

A donation website has been set up and YOU can help her family during this tragic time by making even a small donation. Every little bit helps! Please visit:

http://www.giveforward.com/sarahburke

Sarah was an advocate for the sport, and is accredited with helping to get the sport included in the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was widely considered the favourite to win the gold medal. Rest in peace Sarah.