Abstract:
The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) consensus
statement on ’methods for recording and reporting
of epidemiological data on injury and illness in sport’
recommended standardising methods to advance data
collection and reporting consistency. However, additional
aspects need to be considered when these methods are
applied to specific sports settings. Therefore, we have
developed a snow sports-specific extension of the IOC
statement to promote the harmonisation of injury and
illness registration methods among athletes of all levels
and categories in the different disciplines governed by
the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS),
which is also applicable to other related snow sports
such as biathlon, ski mountaineering, and to some
extent, para snow sports. The panel was selected with
the aim of representing as many different areas of
expertise/backgrounds, perspectives and diversity as
possible, and all members were assigned to thematic
subgroups based on their profiles. After panel formation,
all members were provided with an initial draft of this
extension, which was used as a basis for discussion of
aspects specific to the discipline, application context,
level and sex within their snow sports subgroup topic.
The outcomes were then aligned with the IOC’s existing
consensus recommendations and incorporated into a
preliminary manuscript draft. The final version of this
snow sports-specific extension was developed and
approved in two iterative rounds of manuscript revisions
by all consensus panel members and a final meeting to
clarify open discussion points. This snow sports-specific
extension of the IOC statement is intended to guide
researchers, international and national sports governing
bodies, and other entities recording and reporting
epidemiological data in snow sports to help standardise
data from different sources for comparison and future
research.
