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Australian surfer Owen Wright says he hopes others will follow his lead and start wearing safety helmets while surfing.
Key points:
- Owen Wright, 29, suffered a serious brain injury in 2015 during the surfing world tour
- He is now championing the use of safety helmets while surfing to protect surfers from wipeout injuries
- Neuroscientist Alan Pearce said helmets can project the skull from fractures but do not prevent brain injuries
The 29-year-old missed an entire season of competition on the world tour after suffering a serious brain injury while surfing in Hawaii in 2015.
At one stage it was thought he may never compete again, but he laid those fears to rest by winning his comeback event on the Gold Coast in 2017.
But Wright said last week’s victory in heaving surf at the Tahiti Pro was especially sweet.
“I had that fairytale win back at Snapper [Rocks on the Gold Coast] but I wasn’t with it, I wasn’t there,” he said.
“That’s the thing with head injuries, I found that time period really hard to grasp — even now it’s pretty blurry.
“My brain is so good, I feel healthy, I feel with it … and that’s why this one to me was so much more of a sweet victory.”
‘You don’t have any control’
Wright said his decision to wear a helmet for the first time in competition gave him extra confidence.
“My health is doing so well I was like, ‘I want to protect it’. I don’t want to end up back where I was,” he said.
“Those waves over there are pretty full-on and very consequential. You don’t have any control, you can’t put your arms over your head when you wipe out and it’s so shallow.
“[Wearing the helmet] just quietened those nerves down and it enabled [me] to let me just go for the waves that I wanted to and then go hard and feel a bit more safe and basically protect my future.
“Hopefully there are some kids out there who look at that and go ‘Yeah, I can wear a helmet and I can still surf the way I want to surf’.”
Wright was one of only four competitors out of a field of 36 at the Tahiti Pro to wear a helmet.
The others included French surfer Jeremy Flores and Hawaii’s Sebastian Zietz who, like Wright, now have young families to consider.
“I really hope that does create some change. I think in the sport it’s time,” Wright said.
“It’s time that people realised that our lives are on the line with these wipeouts.
“It’s not just our lives that are affected, it’s everyone around us if something does happen.”
Helmets don’t protect the brain: neuroscientist
Neuroscientist Alan Pearce, an Associate Professor in the School of Allied Health at La Trobe University who specialises in sports-related concussion, said helmets only offered protection against skull fractures.
“Helmets don’t protect the brain from injury, concussion injuries or possibly even brain bleeds, because the brain still moves inside the skull,” he said.
“Some players go out there in other sports such as football wearing a helmet and they get what we call a super-hero complex.
“They become riskier with their techniques or they go in harder because they’ve got the false impression that the helmet is going to protect their brain.”
Dr Pearce dismissed the notion that wearing a helmet could lessen the severity of concussion.
“There’s no such thing as a mild, moderate or severe concussion any more … if you are concussed you are concussed.”
Topics: surfing, brain-and-nervous-system, safety, accidents—other, sports-injuries, lennox-head-2478, wollongong-2500, coolangatta-2535, la-trobe-university-3086, france, hawaii, coolangatta-4225, french-polynesia, lismore-2480
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