Rather than focussing on the results of serious accidents and condemning the sport or activity as dangerous, or trying to lay blame on individuals, there are two vital ingredients to recovering from such an incident, that everyone involved in sport should be focussing on. The first is utilising the appropriate people and services that are available to assist in recovery from a traumatic event. The second and equally important is learning lessons from accidents and making adjustments to the rules, equipment, risk assessment process and safety practices, in order to attempt to prevent such an accident occurring again.
Unfortunately, some accidents are just that – accidents – and no amount of preparation or post event system change will have any bearing on the likelihood of such an accident occurring in the future. In these cases, utilising recovery services is the most important thing a sport or coach can do. This is all the more important because these are the accidents with which the media and other ill-informed individuals will have a field day, and attempt to use as evidence that such-and-such a sport is ‘dangerous’, ‘unsafe’, ‘shouldn’t be allowed’, and so on. For all the rest of the accidents that can be attributed to one or several factors, sports administrators, coaches and officials should analyse those factors, identify changes or modifications that can be made to reduce future risk and move forward in the knowledge that a lesson has been learnt from the accident or injury. In the long run, everyone involved in sport will benefit.