Bobsledder Todd Hays forced to retire with head injury after crash

Hays forced to retire with head injury

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Bobsledder Todd Hays was forced to retire Monday after he was diagnosed with a serious head injury stemming from a crash last week in Germany.

Hays returned to the U.S. for treatment following the wreck last Wednesday during training for a World Cup race. An MRI revealed blood in his brain after he was originally thought to have a concussion.

The 40-year-old Hays, of Del Rio, Texas, was trying to make his fourth Olympic team, and very likely would have earned a roster spot for the Vancouver Games.

“In discussion today with various experts in the field of sports induced injuries, it was the consensus that Todd should not engage in any further bobsledding to avoid any additional trauma to a healing brain which may cause irreversible damage,” team doctor Eugene Byrne said in a U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation release.

Hays did not immediately return messages left by The Associated Press late Monday night.

“My family and my future are more important than anything, and I need to keep that in mind as I consider what’s happened,” Hays said in the release. “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 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 in his collection. And 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.