Spatulas and Knee Injuries

[glademaster]

While i was supposed to be writing a paper for class, I started thinking about the design of the Spatulas and how it would affect the risk of knee injuries while skiing. Most ACL tears are caused by the "phantom foot" scenario, where your body mass is below and to the side of you knee, and the tail of ski hooks up and rails, causing the tear. With the reverse camber ans sidecut, could this happen? Or would the design of the ski let it just slide out harmlessly, preventing any major strains and/or tears of the ACL? How would the shape of the ski affect the chances of other kind of ski related knee injuries? It would be interesting to have some actual tests done on this, obviously not using real people. So maggots, what do you think about this?

[Stikki]

The spats may help a little bit in reducing the chance of a tear but as long we are fusing our ankles to 186cm levers, our odds aren't good.

I remember reading somewhere the forces required to tear knee ligaments are minimal, something like a DIN of 2 is all the holding power it takes to put a knee at risk.

Unless we go back to ankle-high leather boots or make quantum leaps in binding technology, blown knees will be a common and unfortunate byproduct of skiing.

[glademaster]

bump, wow it was a 1:142 post to view ratio before this. That has to be some kind of record.

[glademaster]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[FNG]

is there a doctor in the house?

...no?

...just a bunch of dentists then.

[verbier61]

is there a doctor in the house?

...no?

...just a bunch of dentists then.

I am, but also am not sure this whole issue makes sense. I personally would not bet that spats would make a significant difference in knee injuries' risk and frequency. Secondly, one can make a puppet and try to set up a sort of crash test..... how much would it be representative of real life? :confused:
said that, I'm all but an orthop.... :rolleyes:

[13]

I would think the angle required to load a Spatula enough to cause ACL harm would be so severe, you would more than be on your side/back before it popped.