You have only to see the smashed helmet to realize how close Richard Long came to death when he lost control on an Arapahoe Basin slope and slid head-first into a tree.
“Without the helmet, there is very little doubt, he would not have survived,” Dr. Stewart Levy, chief neurosurgeon at St. Anthony Central Hospital, said Tuesday at a news conference.
Long, 15,a member of the Ontario Alpine Ski team, was practicing a giant slalom run Nov. 12 when he collided with the tree at up to 50 mph, said his father, Brammer Long.
Richard Long, whose ability to speak and process language was damaged, sat quietly in a wheelchair as his father recounted the accident and the two-week wait for his son to come out of a coma.
Levy expects Richard to recover his ability to speak and to ski again. But he doesn’t know if the boy, who hoped to compete in the Olympics, will ever ski as well as he did before the accident.
“I think he will want to race again,” his father said, and Richard, trying to speak, nodded his agreement.
Tom McGhee, The Denver Post
