Ski and rugby deaths bring renewed focus on fatalities and social licence in Australian sport

About 63 Australians die while playing sport or related causes every year. (Getty Images/ABC News)

Sitting in a corner of sports lawyer Annette Greenhow’s desk is a folder labelled “deaths”.

It is a lot thicker than she ever hoped or imagined it would be.

Dr Greenhow is a Bond University assistant professor specialising in the intersection of ethics and oversight in sport.

It is a body of work that has had her pore through details of innumerable tragic sporting deaths, from the loss of cricketer Phillip Hughes to the more recent passings of prominent AFL figures Shane Tuck and Danny Frawley.

She said any death during or as a result of sport was hard to swallow.

But it was far from a new phenomenon.

“You only have to look back to ancient times to see that there’s always been an attraction when it comes to danger in sport,” she said.

“What has changed, however, over the years, is the degree to which we accept and tolerate those dangers.”

On average, at least one person dies during sport or a similar recreation activity every week in Australia.

Last week, Luke Wentworth died during the Murray River Southern 80 ski event.

Just days later, a New South Wales rugby club was rocked by its second fatality in less than a year after the death of a player at training.

Australia’s most fatal sports

Lauren Fortington led a team of researchers at Edith Cowan University to compile the first national analysis of fatal injuries occurring during sport or active recreation.

It was her work that revealed the “shocking” fact that at least one person each week died in Australia engaging in sport.

“What was quite surprising to me was that injury deaths, even when we took out transport, drowning and other overlapping cases; we still had at least one a week,” Dr Fortington said.

Her research focused on coronial reports into deaths during or related to sport between July 1, 2000, and December 31, 2019.

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A total of 1,192 deaths were examined, averaging out to 63 deaths per year.

Males made up 84.4 per cent of those deaths.

The highest proportion of deaths were in wheeled motor sports such as motorcycle racing with 26.9 per cent.

Non-motor sports such as cycling accounted for a further 16.2 per cent.

Blunt force trauma was the most common cause of death with 85.4 per cent.

The number of deaths during team sports was much lower.

There were eight in rugby league and seven in Australian Rules Football over the nearly 20-year study period.

Dr Fortington said the point of the research wasn’t to scare people away from sport but to find and eventually eliminate the fatal risks attached to an otherwise healthy pursuit.

“It’s about making sure we continue to be active and safe and promote that in Australia,” she said.

What about injuries?  

The number of Australians hospitalised due to sporting injuries has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

A total of 66,500 sporting-related hospitalisations were recorded in 2020-21 — an increase of 14,200 on the previous pandemic-impacted year.

Cycling caused the most sporting injuries at 9,800 for the year, an increase of 35 injuries per week on the year prior.

When participation rates are taken into account, rugby codes and wheeled motor sports such as motor bike or car racing had the highest rates of injuries requiring hospitalisation, each with 1,200 injury hospitalisations per 100,000 participants aged 15 and over.

More than half of all hospitalisations for sporting injuries were for fractures – most commonly a fractured arm or shoulder.

Less than 5 per cent of all sport injury hospitalisations were due to concussion.

[graph total injuries]

But Dr Fortington said a significant portion of information was still missing.

She said the total participation numbers in sports wasn’t available, so determining what percentage of athletes were injured, fatally or not, wasn’t possible.

Her call for more information garnered support from the Senate Inquiry into head injuries in sport last year.

“Simply, if we don’t know what’s happening, we can’t prevent it,” she said.

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare spokesperson said it wasn’t “helpful or appropriate” to single out particular sports as more dangerous than others.

“Similar injuries can have a range of causes such as head injuries where although sport is one of the activities that can lead to this injury, the leading cause are falls and transport,” the spokesperson said.

Dr Fortington said it was up to the governing bodies of sports to ensure the appropriate rules were in place to reduce the chance of serious injuries and death.

“We entrust them [administrators], as members of society, and give them, if you like, a social licence to operate,” she said.

Getting it wrong — and right

Annette Greenhow knows too well the impact of deaths in sport.

“The toll on the community is huge,” she said.

“I’m very much about pro-safe sport.

“I’m not anti-sport … but if we as a society feel that not enough is being done and there’s a perception that it’s too risky, then we withdraw from these very, important activities that we love.”

She said it was about finding a balance in administration and competition.

“We have to keep a really close eye on the cost, and the benefit,” she said.