An estimated 3.6 million people in the United States, four per cent of them male, participate in cheerleading.
At the college level, the activity accounted for 70 per cent of “catastrophic” injuries – those resulting in permanent disability or medical conditions – to young women in 2007 according to research published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
There were a total of 110 head and spine injuries resulting in “permanent brain injury, paralysis or death” over the last three decades.
Most injuries were caused not to cheerleaders being thrown in the air but to those catching them on the ground.
Source: Daily Telegraph, 15 September 2013.