Crash
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Bobby Brown—professional freeskier, back-to-back X Games champion, and the first person ever to have landed a Switch Double Misty 1440—has had a rough past couple of weeks. The Colorado native was training in a terrain park at Saas Fee ski resort in Switzerland when he over-rotated a switch 900 to his back, injuring his spine. He was flown out for emergency surgery, spending the following week in the local town of Sion. He’s expected to make a full recovery.
Brown wrote about the injury in an Instagram post:
Three weeks ago, I broke my back while riding in Saas Fee with @redbull. I was doing a sw 9 when I had a mind lapse on the lip and over-rotated to my back. I’ve honestly never experienced that type of lapse before, but looking back, my whole day had been a bit off and maybe I should have listened to that. Fortunately, I was able to tuck my head underneath me, and take all of the impact to my back, avoiding injury to my head and neck. I want to say thank you so much to everyone who jumped into action @charlesbeckinsale @mackerjones @wanja666 @xaerialist and the local flight team helped me evacuate the mountain quickly and safely.
I spent the next week in the hospital in the local town of Sion. The medical team got me in the operating room and surgically repaired my spine. I’m really fortunate that there was no harm done to my spinal cord. They performed a stabilization to allow my vertebrae to heal. I’m incredibly thankful to be getting this hardware out in the coming months and to be on to a full recovery.
I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to Red Bull for taking such great care of me-this time and always-and for getting Nikki and I home. Getting injured halfway across the world creates unique challenges and I’m so grateful to my crew and all of my sponsors for rallying. @nicolegallen hopped on the first flight to Switzerland, while @superheroesmgmt made sure everything went as smooth as possible. I’m still trying to comprehend how I let this happen, but sometimes you just can’t explain. All it did is reinforce the cliche “go with your gut.”
I’m stoked to move on, heal and keep pushing. This incident was quite intense, but the fire burns very strong. Thank you again, Nikki, Jaimeson, the Red Bull family, my family, the surgeons, nurses and everyone who reached out and kept the good vibes strong while we navigated some heavy days. I’m so grateful to have amazing support from all of my sponsors @jianshokouhi @lisaburnes @stevereska @daveysmidt @sydneymkirby Brady C @drewbee_dr and so many amazing people around me. I hope to see you all on the mountain very soon ⚡️
