As the 2026 Winter Olympics continue, sports fans around the world are watching athletes compete in challenging events. However, behind each performance are years of training and efforts to avoid injury. Dr. Michael Maier, assistant professor in the Joseph Barnhart Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, has outlined common injuries that occur during winter sports.
“When you think of skating, you think of falls. Falling on an outstretched hand can lead to wrist fractures, such as fractures of the distal radius and the scaphoid, as well as elbow injuries like radial head fractures,” said Maier.
Knee injuries also concern skaters who fall on their knees or land awkwardly after jumps. These incidents may result in patella fractures or ligament damage, including ACL tears or sprains. Pair skaters catching their partners face a risk for shoulder injuries due to awkward arm positions during a fall.
Hockey players encounter various injuries because they can be knocked into boards or hit while skating at high speeds. “Hockey players incur more ligament injuries because someone might be skating and get hit like a football player would and twist their knee, which can lead to an ACL or meniscus injury,” Maier said. They may also experience acromioclavicular joint separations—where the collar bone meets the shoulder—or clavicle fractures from falls.
Skiers often deal with ligament problems too; ACL tears are especially common. “The knee doesn’t do well without ligaments, so if you try to ski through an ACL tear, you can sustain injury,” Maier explained. Accidents involving ski poles can cause upper extremity injuries such as shoulder dislocations or labral tears when arms are forced outward. Skiers thumb occurs when a pole gets caught in the ground and bends the thumb back, damaging its ulnar collateral ligament.
Falls while skiing can also result in concussions and other brain injuries—a risk shared with snowboarding participants. Snowboarders face additional dangers due to both feet being fixed into boots; this abnormal force sometimes causes snowboarder’s fracture—a break below the ankle at the lateral process of the talus bone.
“Since you don’t have poles like you do in skiing, you might land on your outstretched hand,” said Maier about snowboarding risks. “Like a figure skater who lands this way, you might have wrist and elbow injuries because the force gets transmitted from the wrist up to the elbow and you can have wrist and elbow fractures.”
Maier emphasized that preventing these types of injuries requires preparation beyond sport-specific skills: strong muscles help protect ligaments; balance training improves stability during falls; proper sleep, nutrition, hydration, stretching and core strengthening all play roles in keeping athletes healthy.
“Whether it’s skiing or soccer or basketball, in sports where ACL injuries are very common, athletes are going to be focused at the highest level on prevention,” he said. “Once you have an injury, like a ligament injury, the knee isn’t stable enough to compete.”
Athletes with unstable joints need surgery or rehabilitation before returning to competition: “You don’t want to compete with instability in a sport like skiing or figure skating because you’re at a much higher risk to have an injury,” Maier added.
Core strength is particularly important for balance: “If you seem like you’re mainly using your lower body to maneuver down a ski slope, having really good core strength will lead to better balance and fall retention,” he said. “The body is all connected. Whether you’re training for a Winter Olympic sport or golf, don’t just focus on one part of the body for your sport.”
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