The tyranny of perfection and grace
At the core of artistic sports lies a culture that exalts appearance and perfection. Athletes must not only execute complex acrobatics and flawless routines but also make them appear effortless, smiling broadly even when in excruciating pain.
The ideal of tenacity that is celebrated in contact sports is also prized in artistic sports, but here it must be combined with grace.
“In football, you can be in pain, show it and keep playing, and it will be valued,” said Cadotte. “In artistic sports, you have to put on a big smile and act like nothing happened.”
Interviewed for the study, Danielle, a figure skater, summed up the expectation: “It doesn’t matter if you fall. We always tell athletes, ‘Get up and pretend nothing happened.’”
The imperative to mask symptoms is intensified by the structure of competitions, which are few and far between compared with sports such as football.
Paige, a cheerleader, stressed the tight time limit: “It adds pressure because we have two and a half minutes…. If you miss an element, points are deducted, and you don’t do it again.”
Amelia, an artistic swimmer, added that missing an event is devastating: “You have a concussion, but you can’t miss one of the three competitions in your year.”
Sceptical doctors and coaches
When athletes do report a concussion, they are often met with bewildering scepticism from health professionals, who “minimize or ignore the athlete’s symptoms because they don’t think it’s possible to have a concussion in artistic sports,” Cadotte said.
Olivia, a synchronized swimmer, recounted her experience with an emergency room doctor: “He was convinced that it couldn’t be a concussion. It wasn’t possible, because I got kicked in the water and [the contact] wasn’t directly to my head.”
Émilie, a gymnast, described a similar experience with another doctor: “He didn’t really believe me at first. At first, he said, ‘Maybe you just hit yourself hard and it bruised, that’s what’s causing the headache, it’ll go away.’ But I knew. I had a really bad headache. I knew I hadn’t just bumped my head. So, I kind of had to convince him to look into it a bit more.”
Coaches also frequently fail to take their athletes’ pain seriously. Figure skater Erika reported that after seeing her fall, her coach told her, “Your pupils aren’t dilated, you’re fine. You can get back [on the ice].”
This invalidation reflects a gendered sports hierarchy that devalues women’s sports, said Natalie, a figure skater: “I also think that because it’s a women’s sport, whether we like it or not, society tends to view it as less important.”
Pressure to return in team sports
The study also shines a light on the stress that athletes in artistic team sports feel when their injuries affect their team. Many feel compelled to return before they're ready. “There was also this feeling of ‘I need to get back in, I don’t want the whole team to have to stop’,” said Evelyn, a synchronized swimmer.
Since artistic team sports rely heavily on precise choreography and synchronization, replacing an injured athlete is nearly impossible. “Every member of the team can’t perform every position,” Cadotte said.
Sydney, a cheerleader, explained the problem: “Not everyone can do a backflip. The back [one of the athletes who lifts and supports the flyer] can’t go up in the air, it doesn’t work. It’s not just anyone who can replace [the concussed athlete].”
Interrupting training can also mess with body image, a particularly sensitive issue in aesthetics-driven sports. Chloe, a figure skater, feared she would no longer meet thinness standards: “I was partly eager to start moving again so I wouldn’t gain too much weight from being inactive, from not doing anything.”
Coaches sometimes pile on the pressure. Erika, the figure skater, recalled that at age 15, she was subjected to surprise weigh-ins: “Someone once told me, ‘If you continue (being overweight) like that, you’re going to have to sell your Lululemon clothes.’”
Pressed by these overlapping demands, coaches and sports organizations may actively discourage athletes from consulting a doctor to avoid an official diagnosis, the research suggests.
Adapting protocols for safety
Cadotte believes that return-to-sport protocols—often modeled on male contact sports—are ill-suited to artistic disciplines. And unlike those in contact sports, these athletes lack appropriate protective equipment.
In cheerleading, while small foam helmets are sometimes used in training, their effectiveness is unproven and Cadotte worries they may have a placebo effect, creating a false sense of security.
Greater recognition of the risks is needed, said Cadotte, stressing the importance of including artistic athletes in research.
“If we compare the concussion rate in cheerleading, it’s higher than some rates reported in the literature on soccer,” she noted. “So why are these athletes left out?”
In her ongoing research, Cadotte is exploring how resources can be adapted or developed for artistic sports so that female athletes can return to their disciplines more safely, without having to sacrifice their health on the altar of grace.
