Sarah Burke, Celebrity Relay teammate from Nautica Tri in 2009

A couple years ago I raced as part of a Celebrity Relay in the Miami Nautica Triathlon. I was on Sarah Burke's, Cross-country skier, team. Sarah Biked, Isabel Swam, and I ran. I had to race Anna Kournikova...and I beat her =) by 2+ minutes.

The reason I started this post was because today as I was flipping through the channels and I came across the news that  Sarah Burke died yesterday.

"Just over a week ago, though, as Burke, a top Canadian freestyle skier from Ontario, neared the end of a normal training run inside a 22-foot halfpipe at a resort in Park City, Utah, something went wrong. Burke completed the move and then flipped over — awkwardly, but seemingly innocuously — hitting her head on the ground. She then lost her pulse and stopped breathing.

On Thursday morning, nine days after the fall, Burke died at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, where she had been airlifted that day in an effort to save her life. She was 29.

The cause of Burke’s death was hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, a condition that occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen, said a statement released Thursday afternoon by Burke’s publicist, Nicole Wool, on behalf of her family.

Burke, who resided in Squamish, British Columbia, was considered a pioneer and a charismatic spokeswoman for a growing sport. She was a four-time gold medalist at the Winter X Games and helped campaign to have half-pipe skiing added to the Olympic program.

The sport will make its Olympic debut at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. Burke was expected to be one of the gold medal favorites there.

It was only for one day that we met....and hung out, but I wish I could tell her parents (who my parents hung out with the whole race and talked about their lives as #1 fans) how sorry I am for their loss.