Hurtling down a towering halfpipe on a pair of skis, no maneuver is routine. But Sarah Burke had done this one, the 540 Flat Spin, countless times.

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 halfpipe 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.

"She always asked, 'Why not?' " said Peter Judge, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, who knew Burke for more than a decade. "It was: 'Why not ski with the men? Why not be in the Olympics?' "

Her death will draw attention to the dangers facing those who participate in halfpipe sports, which feature soaring, high-speed moves executed on slick surfaces within immense walls.

Burke was injured Jan. 10 on the same halfpipe where Kevin Pearce, a promising snowboarder from Norwich, Vt., sustained a serious head injury in 2009.

Burke, while trying to land a trick at the base of the halfpipe, crashed and struck her head, rupturing her vertebral artery. The torn artery led to a severe intracranial hemorrhage, which in turn caused Burke to enter into cardiac arrest at the scene, her family's statement said.

As CPR was administered, Burke remained without a pulse and was not breathing. She was airlifted to the emergency department at University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, where she was placed on life support. The next day, doctors performed surgery to repair the ruptured artery, though her recovery was far from assured.

"With injuries of this type, we need to observe the course of her brain function before making definitive pronouncements about Sarah's prognosis for recovery," Dr. William T. Couldwell, the surgeon who performed the operation, said the day after the procedure.

Although the operation was successful, subsequent tests revealed Burke had sustained irreversible damage to her brain as a result of the cardiac arrest, which had hindered the supply of oxygen to her brain.

Burke died "peacefully surrounded by those she loved" at 9:22 a.m., the family's statement said.

Doctors and officials at University Hospital, at the request of Burke's family, were unavailable for comment Thursday.

Burke's crash inevitably called to mind the one involving Pearce, which instigated debates on the safety of such events. Pearce was knocked unconscious after hitting his head on the edge of the halfpipe and remained in a coma for weeks.

Though he got back on a snowboard last month, his recovery from the effects of his injury continues, and he has no plans to compete again.

Burke's death could renew concerns about the sport.

Judge said Thursday that he expected that Burke's death would increase scrutiny. He said his organization considered athlete safety a "pre-eminent and predominant concern." Burke's accident, he said, was an "extraordinary" tragedy that would not ultimately require an overhaul of safety procedures.

"She was doing a trick she was well versed in, the conditions were good, and everything seemed normal," Judge said. "That mitigates a lot of that sort of introspection."