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 freestyler, who helped get superpipe accepted into the Olympics, died Thursday, nine days after crashing at 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 blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released by Burke's publicist, Nicole Wool, on behalf of the family.
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 wanted.
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