Sarah Burke: Canadian Ski Star in Coma after Accident

Sarah Burke, a Canadian freestyle skier and four-time Winter X Games champion, was in a coma and in critical condition, on Tuesday night, after a serious training accident in Park City, Utah.

Peter Judge, the Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian freestyle team, in an email to The Associated Press, confirmed the reports and added he didn't know what that meant for her recovery.

Burke was airlifted to a Salt Lake City hospital on Tuesday afternoon, after suffering a serious head injury while preparing for the 2012 X Games, to be held later this month.

She was stabilized there at the scene by resort mountain patrol, who took her to base patrol, where she was flown to the hospital in Salt Lake, said Andy Miller, a spokesman at the Park City Mountain Resort to Associated Press.

Burke's husband and fellow pro, Rory Bushfield, sent a message on Twitter, on Tuesday night, asking if someone with a private jet could fly him and Burke's mother from Vancouver to Salt Lake City.

Sarah is a very, very strong human and she will be fine, Bushfield told The Vancouver Sun.

We're a bit shell-shocked right now. It's tough to read. The signs are dramatic and catastrophic, but it's hard to gauge how dramatic and catastrophic. The same treatment and symptoms can be on a broad
scale, Judge said.

According to the Web site powder.com, an eyewitness to the accident said the 29-year-old whiplashed over onto her side after landing a trick off the wall at the bottom of the resort's superpipe.

Burke, the daughter of ski racers, was born in Midland, Ontario, Canada in 1982. In 2001, she won first place at the U.S. Open in the half pipe and came second in slopestyle.

Burke also won ESPN's 2001 Award for Female Skier of the Year. She was voted as 2007's Best Female Action Sports Athlete at the ESPY awards as well as BERT.

Also Read: Sarah Burke: Canadian Ski Star Still in Coma after Superpipe Injury