No sports discipline — not even boxing — has been dropped from the modern Olympics because it was too dangerous, and it would still be quite a surprise if slopestyle became the first.

Contested (and performed) over rails and jumps on a snowboard or on skis, slopestyle was one of the big hits and gravity-teasing novelties of the Winter Games in Sochi in February before the world — and Russia — moved on to weightier matters.

But when a doctor as experienced and connected as Lars Engebretsen expresses deep concerns about slopestyle’s safety, it would be unwise to dismiss him as a lone voice in the mountains.

Engebretsen, a Norwegian orthopedic surgeon and researcher, is, among other duties, head of scientific activities for the International Olympic Committee. He spoke last weekend in Monaco to The Associated Press and said of slopestyle that “right now the injury rate as it was in Sochi was too high to be a sport that we have in the Olympics” and that the discipline “should change — otherwise we shouldn’t have it.”