Sarah Burke Remembered - A Woman Who Should Inspire us All

Yes, this website is Man’s Ambition and yes, the main goal is to show the struggle male athletes, entertainers, businessmen and luminaries undergo while pursuing greatness, in some instances immortality or revolution.

But we know that the world doesn’t work like that; that is, in no way do we want to negate the struggles or the contributions of women to the improvement of our world. Especially today, women are pushing men in the arenas of sports, business, entertainment; what actor isn’t inspired to deliver a better performance after watching Meryl Streep. And while we constantly see the names of male CEO’s plastered across the papers for their improprieties and shady business practices, women like Irene Rosenfeld (CEO, Kraft), Indra Nooyi (CEO, PepsiCo), and Ellen Kullman (CEO, Dupont) have been expanding and diversifying their blue chip companies via splits, acquisitions, and R&D that many male CEO’s couldn't execute without breaking some sort of law or crossing some ethical boundaries. Along those lines, there is a young woman who just passed away who may never get the credit she deserves for her impact on sports.

 Sarah Burke was a sick skier. Not a sick female skier, a sick skier. Period

She’s won Women’s Superpipe X-Games gold 4 times and, just to add diversity, even won a silver once for shits and giggles. She was the first woman to bust a 1080 in the pipe, a trick nearly every man alive can’t do. She killed it in the pipe, park, big mountain, Sarah could do it all. And not to sound superficial but, well, she was hot. Like model FHM top-100 hot.

Not only that but when you watch the winter Olympics in Sochi and all anybody can talk about is the Skier Pipe events, you can give thanks to Sarah Burke. She was one of the people leading the charge to get it accepted into the stodgiest of sports institutions’ repertoire. Many people attribute the acceptance of Skier Superpipe into the 2014 Olympics to Sarah’s arguments. And she was considered the frontrunner for Olympic gold in spite of the fact that it was 2 years off. She’s like the Shaun White of Women’s skierpipe, heads and shoulders above the rest, busting tricks most of her competitors could only dream of.

She slammed hard training in Park City last week, on the same pipe, in fact, on which Kevin Pearce busted himself while attempting a double cork, prompting all sorts of rise and call from outsiders who have no idea about these sports. No doubt this will give them another chance to chime in about the death risk inherent in these sports. She split an artery to her head and went into surgery but after a week was declared brain dead.

Which reminds me, her family could use a little help with this. The purity of extreme sports is part of what makes it beautiful. It isn’t all restricted by overlarge governing bodies with a million rules and strict competitive uniforms. There’s a nostalgic essence inherent in these competitors in the fact that they literally risk their lives not for multi-million dollar contracts or private jets and self-winding Rolexes and powder blue Bentleys but for their love of the sport, the progression of what is possible not only for a skier but for a human. As such, when a tragedy like this befalls one of these super-committed athletes, they don’t have the NFL to pay millions of dollars for their medical care and compensate the people they love.

It’s not a job but a lifestyle. Unlike a baseball player who steps off the field and becomes just a rich guy with huge forearms, a skier is always a skier, wearing a lot of the same clothes they ski in day in and day out, a lot of them engaging in their sport upwards of 300 days a year. And man or woman, the passion and innovation exemplified by these athletes is unrivaled in any other professional athletics. These sports are evolving in leaps and bounds. As such, tragedies happen. The point of this isn’t to dwell on her death, to talk about the risks and give fodder to the people who will no doubt be asking the Olympics et al to change the safety precautions on these sports. If they did such, they would be insulting Sarah Burke and what she gave her life for.

The point of this is to let you all know about a special woman who pushed the wide world of winter sports forward. An innovator, an athlete, and a champion. A woman who set an example towards which all of us men should aspire.

- Ryan