It was a routine manoeuvre on a well-worn halfpipe that left Sarah Burke clinging to life and a fledgling sport missing one of its biggest stars. 
 
 The 28-year-old freestyle skier was performing a trick near the bottom of the pipe in Park City, Utah Tuesday afternoon. She landed on her feet, but something went wrong, and she fell, hitting her head. 
 
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 She was treated at the scene by ski patrol, then flown to the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, where she remained Wednesday in a medically induced coma and breathing through a tube. Burke was listed in critical condition. 
 
 While her husband, skier Rory Bushfield, and other family members flew to Utah to be at her side, those involved in her sport took stock of the implications of having a key promoter sidelined. 
 
 Burke’s chosen event is the superpipe – like a halfpipe but wider and with taller walls – a sport that has been steadily gaining attention in recent years. She has dominated the competition at the Winter X Games, winning four gold medals in superpipe, and taken top honours at both the World Cup and world championships. She was set to defend her Winter X title later this month. 
 
 She also played a major role in pushing the sport’s legitimacy, successfully lobbying the International Olympic Committee to add it to the roster in the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. 
 
 “Sarah in many ways defines the sport. She’s been involved since the early days, in getting into the pipe,” said Peter Judge, CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. “She has also been more than willing to be part of the grassroots development.” 
 
 Part of that involved coaching children every summer at Whistler. 
 
 “It’s so much fun, the atmosphere, the vibe for the kids,” she told The Globe and Mail last July. “It’s always good to come here and remember ‘why’– the kids are so excited when they do their first 360.” 
 
 A native of Midland, Ont., Burke started skiing in Whistler’s halfpipe herself at 17. Free-skier Mike Douglas discovered her there performing triple 360s. 
 
 Her extent of her injuries remained unclear Wednesday, with doctors in Salt Lake City saying only that she had been sedated. Bob Foxford, the association’s physician, who has not treated her, said inducing a coma and cooling a patient to slow down their metabolism is standard procedure in treating a brain injury. The effect is to put the brain to rest and allow swelling to go down. 
 
 “This is the first serious head injury in an athlete that we’ve seen,” he said. 
 
 A group of Burke's family and friends, sitting in the hospital cafeteria late Wednesday afternoon, declined to speak with reporters. They said they planned to make a statement Thursday morning. 
 
 Meanwhile, an hour’s drive from the hospital through mountains rising from the scrublands, Park City Mountain Resort’s superpipe was deserted in mid-afternoon. The pipe, which slopes toward the base of the hill, has vertical walls as tall as a two-storey building. 
 
 “Sometimes the worst falls don’t look that bad,” said snowboarder Matty Mo, 27, from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “That thing is 22 feet tall, really icy, and people are going really fast. They’re training for the X Games, so they’re getting into it.” 
 
 It was this same run that felled American snowboarder Kevin Pearce on the last day of 2009. He banged his face on the lip of the halfpipe wall as he practised a trick. At the time, doctors didn’t know if he would ever walk again. 
 
 “I feel like I remember being in my hospital bed and being like, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to go out and ride in a couple weeks,’ ” he recalled last month. “I had no idea what I was in for.” 
 
 Two surgeries and two years of intensive rehabilitation later, he was able to snowboard again a few weeks ago. 
 
 Accidents such as Pearce’s have played a key role in boosting the use of life-saving gear. National Ski Areas Association data shows helmet use among skiers and snowboarders has more than doubled in a decade. 
 
 Officials insisted Wednesday that the level of risk was acceptable, despite the injuries. 
 
 “[Burke’s crash] has the effect of making people more acutely aware of how important safety is,” Judge said. “There are inherent risks in any sport.” 
 
 As for the trick she was performing at the time of the accident, he would only say: “It was nothing out of the norm, nothing on the extreme end of the spectrum.” ||||| Sarah Burke was an X Games star with a grass-roots mentality _ a daredevil superpipe skier who understood the risks inherent to her sport and the debt she owed to it. 
 
 FILE - In this March 12, 2008, file photo, Sarah Burke, of Canada, celebrates on the podium after winning the women's halfpipe freestyle title at the World Cup finals in Valmalenco, Italy. Burke died... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March 12, 2008, file photo, Sarah Burke, of Canada, celebrates on the podium after winning the women's halfpipe freestyle title at the World Cup finals in Valmalenco, Italy. Burke died... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In a Jan. 28, 2010, file photo, Sarah Burke, of Canada, reacts after failing to place in the top-three finishers in the slopestyle skiing women's final at the Winter X Games at Buttermilk Mountain... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILe - In this Oct. 15, 2007, file photo, honoree Sarah Burke arrives at the Women's Sports Foundation's 28th Annual Salute to Women in Sports at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Burke died Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2010, file photo, Sarah Burke of Canada, competes during the women's skiing superpipe final round at the Winter X Games at Buttermilk Mountain outside Aspen, Colo. Burke died Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March 17, 2006, file photo, Sarah Burke of Canada, smiles as she celebrates her gold medal in the halfpipe FIS world Cup event Friday, March 17, 2006 at Apex Mountain in Penticton, British... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILe - In this March 17, 2006, file photo, Sarah Burke of Canada, jumps to a gold medal in the women's halfpipe freestyle skiing World Cup event at Apex Mountain in Penticton, British Columbia. Burke... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2011, file photo, Sarah Burke, of Canada, competes in the women's halfpipe finals at the freestyle skiing world championships in Park City, Utah. Burke died Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012,... (Associated Press) 
 
 The pioneering freestyler, who helped get superpipe accepted into the Olympics, died Thursday, nine days after crashing at a training run in Park City, Utah. 
 
 Burke, who lived near Whistler in British Columbia, was 29. 
 
 Tests revealed she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released by Burke's publicist, Nicole Wool, on behalf of the family. 
 
 A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke crashed on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a training accident on Dec. 31, 2009. 
 
 Wool said Burke's organs and tissues were donated, as she had wanted. 
 
 "The family expresses their heartfelt gratitude for the international outpouring of support they have received from all the people Sarah touched," the statement said. 
 
 A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke will be remembered as much for the hardware she collected as the legacy she left for women in superpipe skiing, a sister sport to the more popular snowboarding brand that has turned Shaun White, Hannah Teter and others into stars. 
 
 Aware of the big role the Olympics played in pushing the Whites of the world from the fringes into the mainstream, Burke lobbied to add superpipe skiing to the Winter Games program, noting that no new infrastructure would be needed. 
 
 Her arguments won over Olympic officials and the discipline will debut at the Sochi Games in 2014. Burke likely would have been a favorite for the gold medal at her sport's Olympic debut. 
 
 "Sarah, in many ways, defines the sport," Peter Judge, the CEO of Canada's freestyle team, said before her death. "She's been involved since the very, very early days as one of the first people to bring skis into the pipe. She's also been very dedicated in trying to define her sport but not define herself by winning. For her, it's been about making herself the best she can be rather than comparing herself to other people." 
 
 She was, Judge said, as committed to the grass roots of the sport _ giving clinics to youngsters and working with up-and-coming competitors _ as performing at the top levels. 
 
 "She was a great, positive person for the whole team, the whole sport," said David Mirota, the Canadian team's high performance director. "She enlightens the room, and she's great." 
 
 Burke's death is also sure to re-ignite the debate over safety on the halfpipe. 
 
 Pearce's injury _ he has since recovered and is back to riding on snow _ was a jarring reminder of the dangers posed to these athletes who often market themselves as devil-may-care thrillseekers but know they make their living in a far more serious, and dangerous, profession. 
 
 The sport's leaders defend the record, saying mandatory helmets and air bags used on the sides of pipes during practice and better pipe-building technology has made this a safer sport, even though the walls of the pipes have risen significantly over the past decade. They now stand at 22 feet high. 
 
 Some of the movement to the halfpipe decades ago came because racing down the mountain, the way they do in snowboardcross and skicross, was considered even more dangerous _ the conditions more unpredictable and the athletes less concerned with each other's safety. 
 
 But there are few consistent, hard-and-fast guidelines when it comes to limiting the difficulty of the tricks in the halfpipe, and as the money and fame available in the sport grew, so did the tricks. In 2010, snowboarding pioneer Jake Burton told The Associated Press that much of this was self-policed by athletes who knew where to draw the line. 
 
 "If the sport got to the point where halfpipe riding became really dangerous, I think riders would do something about it," Burton said. "It wouldn't be cool anymore." 
 
 His opinion is shared by many. 
 
 "There are inherent risks in everything," Judge said. "Certainly, freestyle skiing has one of the greatest safety records of almost any sport. Freestyle is a very safe sport in large part because we had to build a safe sport in order to get into the Olympics." 
 
 In 2009, Burke broke a vertebra in her back after landing awkwardly while competing in slopestyle at the X Games. It was her lobbying that helped get the X Games to include women's slopestyle _ where riders shoot down the mountain and over "features" including bumps and rails. 
 
 It wasn't her best event, but she felt compelled to compete because she pushed for it.. She came to terms with her injury quickly. 
 
 "I've been doing this for long time, 11 years," she said in a 2010 interview. "I've been very lucky with the injuries I've had. It's part of the game. Everybody gets hurt. Looking back on it, I'd probably do the exact same thing again." 
 
 She returned a year after that injury and kept going at the highest level, trying the toughest tricks and winning the biggest prizes. 
 
 A native of Midland, Ontario, Burke won the ESPY in 2007 as female action sports athlete of the year. 
 
 In 2010, she married another freestyle skier, Rory Bushfield, and they were headliners in a documentary film project on the Ski Channel called "Winter." 
 
 In her interview with AP two years ago, Burke reflected on the niche she'd carved out in the action-sports world. 
 
 "I think we're all doing this, first off, because we love it and want to be the best," she said. "But I also think it would've been a great opportunity, huge for myself and for skiing and for everyone, if we could've gotten into the (Vancouver) Olympics. It's sad. I mean, I'm super lucky to be where I am, but that would've been pretty awesome." 
 
 A little more than a year later, with Burke's prodding, her sport was voted in for 2014.
– A freestyle skier credited with helping get her sport included in the 2014 Winter Olympics is in a coma in Salt Lake City after a fall, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail. Canadian Sarah Burke, 29, fell yesterday during a training run at a Utah mountain resort. Burke has won gold four times at the Winter X Games in superpipe skiing, which the Salt Lake City Tribune says is similar to snowboarding's halfpipe, but on skis. She was a heavy favorite for Olympic gold in Russia in 2014. "She landed a trick down in the bottom end of the pipe, and kind of bounced, from her feet to her head," says the CEO of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. "It wasn’t anything that looked like a catastrophic fall, so I’m a bit mystified." The accident happened on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce fell and suffered a brain injury in 2009. He is now back on the slopes.