Sarah Burke was an X Games star with a grass-roots mentality – a daredevil superpipe skier who understood the risks inherent to her sport and the debt she owed to it.
The pioneering Canadian freestyler, who helped get superpipe accepted into the Olympics, died Thursday after a Jan. 10 crash during a training run in Park City, Utah.
Burke, who lived near Whistler, in British Columbia, was 29.
Tests revealed she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and ***** after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released by her publicist, Nicole Wool, on behalf of the ******.
A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke crashed on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a training accident on Dec. 31, 2009.
Wool said Burke's organs and tissues were donated, as she had requested before the accident.
"The ****** expresses their heartfelt gratitude for the international outpouring of support they have received from all the people Sarah touched," the statement said.
A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke will be remembered as much for the hardware she collected as the legacy she left for women in superpipe skiing, a ****** sport to the more popular snowboarding brand that has turned Shaun White, Hannah Teter and others into stars.
