LA Harbor News

From the outside looking in, Olympic gold medalist Lizzy Yarnold's dominance was hardly ever in question; she won gold in 2014 as well as 2018 in women's skeleton.

However, it has emerged that during her run of dominance, Yarnold frequently dealt with sinus problems that almost kept her off the podium in 2018. 

In the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, the defending women skeleton champion had struggled in the season leading to the Games, but set a new track record in the first run. Affected by the middle ear disorder, which had impeded her season, she had a mediocre second run, but a strong slide brought her back to second, and only two hundredths of a second off gold after the third run. In the fourth run, she established a significant new track record, thereby becoming the first double Olympic champion (male or female) in the history of skeleton, and the first woman to win multiple medals.

"Eustachian tube dysfunction is the collapse of the tube (the eustachian tube) that runs from the nasal cavity to the ear," sinus expert Dr. Matt Hershcovitch of SoCal Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers told LA Harbor News. "This is what you feel when you're going up on an airplane, going up through a mountain pass or diving deep underwater, that's the pressure you feel in your ears. It's a very, very annoying problem when it does occur. I'm an avid diver and I've had it happen to me, and it is quite frustrating and quite annoying."

According to Hershcovitch, this problem can be crippling and be extremely difficult to overcome, especially for high-level athletes that compete in the cold and in different elevations.

"Unfortunately, it does not resolve very quickly for some people, and a lot of people who have chronic sinusitis and allergies have this as a chronic problem," Hershcovitch continued. "We can actually do a balloon dilation of the eustachian tube to force it open, remodel it and keep it open, so the ears can ventilate with equalized pressure. Prior to the advent of the balloon catheter, the only way to do this was to take them to surgery and make a hole in the eardrum and sometimes have to put a tube in there. This has revolutionized that as a minimally invasive procedure that we don't have to take some of the surgery for."

Yarnold's sinus problems were caused by an inner ear issue. While her situation was unique in that she was competing for gold in the Winter Olympics, millions of people suffer from sinus issues in the U.S. each year. 

Those who are seeking a diagnosis can take this Sinus Self-Assessment to start down the path of treatment.