Former Olympic bobsledder who killed himself likely had CTE

A former Olympic bobsledder who killed himself last year had chronic traumatic encephalopathy researchers concluded, the same degenerative brain disease that has been found in former football players and other athletes who participated in violent contact sports.

Pavle Jovanovic hanged himself in his family’s metal works shop in central New Jersey in May 2020. He was 43. He is believed to be the first bobsledder and the first athlete in an Olympic sliding sport to be found with CTE. The debilitating brain disease results from multiple head traumas and can cause severe brain degeneration, often long before the stage of life when the wider population experiences brain disorders, such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

The finding of CTE in Jovanovic’s brain is likely to send shock waves through a sport that is just beginning to understand the dangers of what participants refer to casually as “sled head.” Athletes have long used the term to describe the exhausted fog, dizziness and headaches that even a routine run can cause.

Jovanovic was the third elite North American bobsledder to kill himself since 2013.

In recent years, an increasing number of current and retired athletes in sliding sports, especially bobsled and skeleton, have said they suffer chronically from many of the same symptoms that plague football players and other contact sport athletes. They deal with constant headaches, a heightened sensitivity to bright lights and loud noises, forgetfulness and psychological problems.

Jovanovic ran track and played football in high school and saw limited action during two seasons of college football, but he stopped attending Rutgers University full time in 1997 to pursue bobsledding. He spent roughly a decade competing internationally in bobsled, a sport that requires athletes to careen down an ice track at 80 mph and endure a brain rattling experience that researchers have compared with shaken baby syndrome.