Three-time U.S. bobsled Olympian Todd Hays will meet with a neurologist to further evaluate the severity of bleeding in his brain and determine a course of treatment.
Surgery has not been deemed necessary at this point, a positive sign for the 40-year-old from Del Rio, Texas.
Hays retired from bobsledding late Monday after being told that what was originally diagnosed as a concussion was actually an intraparenchymal hematoma, otherwise described as bleeding into brain tissue. Doctors told Hays that “additional trauma to a healing brain … may cause irreversible damage” and advised him to stop racing immediately.
With that, his quest for a fourth Olympic team came to a sudden end.
“This isn’t how I wanted to end my career, and I’m devastated because I feel like I’m letting my team down,” Hays said Monday night in a statement released by the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. “There are three guys in my sled that were counting on me to give them an Olympic ticket. Now I can’t do that.”
Members of the U.S. World Cup team learned of Hays’ diagnosis and decision around the time they awoke in Europe on Tuesday. The World Cup tour continues this weekend in Altenberg, Germany.
“It’s a huge shock,” USA-1 driver Steven Holcomb, the reigning world four-man bobsled champion, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The crash that ended Hays’ career came last Wednesday on a foggy, rainy day on a track in Winterberg, Germany, during a World Cup training session. Hays was in his four-man sled when he lost control. None of his three sled pushers were injured.
After an overnight stay in a German hospital, USBSF doctors decided to bring Hays back to Lake Placid, N.Y., for further evaluation, with hopes he could compete in an America’s Cup race this weekend.
That’s when the bleeding was detected, quickly sending shock waves through the federation.
Hays first retired after failing to reach the podium at the 2006 Turin Games, then returned to the sport in 2008. He is one of the most-decorated U.S. bobsled drivers ever, with two world championship medals. When he drove a U.S. sled to silver at Salt Lake City in 2002, it ended a 46-year Olympic medal drought for American men’s bobsledding.
Hays won a World Cup silver medal in two-man bobsledding earlier this season at Park City, Utah, then strained his hamstring the next night in a four-man race. He rehabbed and remained in Olympic contention, and the race in Winterberg would have been his first time back on the World Cup circuit since the leg injury.
“I felt like the pieces were coming together,” Hays said. “As you get older you worry about injuries, but I kept my speed and strength and was able to compete at the highest level. I never expected this was how I would end my career. But again, my health, my family and my future are more important than a few more runs down the track.”
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