This weekend, Deadspin reported on the tragic paralysis of CrossFit Games athlete Kevin Ogar during the OC Throwdown in Southern California. Ogar suffered what's reported to be a severed spine after he collapsed under the bar while attempting a snatch.
News outlets immediately began to focus on the "dangers of CrossFit." But let's be clear: This could occur to any competitive weightlifter, whether a CrossFit athlete or a gold-medal winning Olympian.
"It looks like a 100 percent freak accident. He was a very skilled Olympic lifter and obviously knows how to bail out of a lift," says Robert dos Remedios, C.S.C.S., director of strength and conditioning at College of the Canyons and longtime Men's Health training advisor. "Everything that had to happen to cause this horrible injury, happened."
The actual reason for this disaster isn't yet known. "It looks like he just falls prior to when he would actually bail, as if there was a complete shutdown of his system," says dos Remedios. "The worst part is that if the barbell had been one millimeter higher, lower, left, or right, he probably pops up."
Dos Remedios points to Mattias Steiner, of the German Olympic weightlifting team, who won gold at the 2008 Olympics, but whose neck was seemingly crushed during the snatch in 2012. "At the London Olympics, Steiner had twice as much weight on the bar as Kevin Ogar did, yet he walked away after the initial daze, with no injury at all," says dos Remedios. (Watch the video below to see Steiner's near disaster.)
We wish Kevin Ogar a speedy and full recovery. If you'd like to learn more about him and contribute to his recovery fund, visit KevinOgar.com.
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