Podborski a champion for safety
Retired alpine skiing star on mission to reduce preventable injuries
Retired Canadian alpine skiing star Steve Podborski remembers that one night in May1982, the lower ring of the CN Tower’s observation deck lit up with bulbs spelling out his surname. He just can’t remember why. It clearly had to do with his status at the time. He was named to the Order of Canada that year, and in 1980 he’d won Olympic bronze in the downhill.
But back then, Podborski says, he spent eight months a year out of the country — travelling, training, competing and pleasure skiing. News of local developments sometimes took weeks to reach him and some details, like the impetus for lighting up the CN Tower in his name, got lost entirely.
These days, Podborski serves as the chief executive officer of Parachute Canada, a non-profit that aims to promote safety and reduce the number of preventable injuries among Canadians in several aspects of day-to-day life. He works to promote Parachute’s safety-first message in a digitally connected world, where messages can circle the globe in seconds, but says communication breakdowns, like the one that kept him from learning the exact reason for the CN Tower display, still happen.
Earlier this year, Parachute’s detailed concussion protocols were adopted by 42 national sports organizations. The next phase, which kicks off next month, aims to make sure those guidelines filter down to provincial, regional and local sports bodies.
“We’ve got the credibility and the ability to deliver the messages properly,” Podborski said. “It’s filling the blanks. … Soccer Canada (adopted the protocol) right away, but there are a lot of independent soccer clubs right across Canada. We have to get to all of them.”
Podborski, 61, acknowledges Parachute Canada has a mandate so broad that knowing where to start can present challenges. But he points out the group gains traction by concentrating on issues that have wide appeal but can benefit from a focused message. So, the group has an initiative that hopes to prevent falls among seniors, and was ramping up another stressing cannabis safety in the home as legalization arrived.
And there’s the fight against concussions, which, for Parachute Canada, predated Podborski’s June 2017 start date as CEO. Public interest made concussion prevention and treatment a sensible entry point for Parachute, since the topic never seems to leave the news cycle. UCLA’s football program announced this past Monday that two players would miss the rest of the season with concussions. On Tuesday, retired NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. published an autobiography in which he describes the painstaking detail with which he doc- umented more than 20 concussions he suffered as a professional stock-car racer.
“I wrote the notes so that if I ever had a crash that left me unable to communicate, the notes would be there,” Earnhardt Jr. told the Washington Post. “I could point to the notes and say, ‘Here’s the history of the things that have been happening to me.’ ”
Podborski acknowledges the 42 organizations that adopted Parachute’s guidelines have vastly different needs. A boxer, for example, faces a greater dayto-day risk of brain injury than a distance runner would. But he stresses the guidelines were designed with customization in mind, and doctors and trainers are encouraged to tailor them to specific needs.
“It’s best practices so we can have the best health care available,” Podborski said. “We wrote the book on it, literally.”
Meanwhile, Parachute Cana- da has built a committee of neurologists and sports injury specialists to broaden and deepen its reach in concussion management. The group includes Toronto Western Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Tator, who runs the Canadian Concussion Centre, where the type of research that’s central to Parachute’s concussion campaigns takes place.
Earlier this year, four retired Canadian athletes made history by becoming the first women to agree to donate their brains to the centre after their deaths.
“The fact is, we don’t know what the differences are because a lot of the research has been done on men,” retired hockey player Cassie Campbell-Pascall told the Star in May. “I thought I had better put my brain where my mouth is.”
Podborski’s reinvention as a sports safety advocate owes to a similar desire to make the transition from talk to action.
He recalls being out at dinner with retired tennis great John Newcombe and grumbling about how Canada’s aspiring Olympic alpine skiers would continue struggling without more support from their national organization. But instead of continuing to listen to Podborski rant, Newcombe challenged him to do something to change the situation.
Podborski says that moment led to his joining the Canadian Olympic Committee, working on the bid committee for the 2010 Vancouver Games and serving as chef de mission four years later in Sochi, Russia. A stint at Telus followed, and that led to the current position at Parachute.
The two-time Olympian is aware that it seems counterintuitive for an athlete who once led a crew of downhill skiers known as the Crazy Canucks to become a full-time advocate for sage sport. But Podborski says the roles don’t conflict. As a world-class athlete in a dangerous sport, he says he’s always been hyper-aware of safety and hopes to spread that message.
“That’s the conversation,” he said. “It might be the biggest game of your career, but is it worth dying for? … I want that just to be part of our culture.”