Killer Olympics 2010

[guest051510-1]

http://olympics.fanhouse.com/2010/02...on-olympics%2F

Fast-Track Tragedy: Shame on Olympics
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — So
this is what the Olympics have become, a
dateline for a death sport. It wasn’t
enough for organizers to build a safe,
practical sliding track on Blackcomb
Mountain in Whistler. No, they had to
design a $105 million monster that turned
the luge into a joyride to hell, with wicked
turns, a 152-meter drop — the world’s
longest — and a surface so rapid that it
lured racers to approach 95 mph.
Too fast. Too dangerous. And too deadly
for a mere sled — basically, a missile
upon which a human being slides face-up
and feet-first, vulnerable to his immediate
demise.
All week, there have been crashes on the
course, more than a dozen in total, one
that left a Romanian athlete unconscious
for a brief time. And all week, not a soul
from the International Olympic
Committee, the International Luge
Federation or the Vancouver organizing
committee expressed concerns about the
wipeouts. Nevermind that one racer had
described the 13th curve as the “50-50
Curve,” based on the odds of a crash.
Nevermind that 15 months ago, when the
sport’s elite racers familiarized
themselves with the Whistler Sliding
Center, athletes suffered 73 crashes
during training runs. Nevermind that as
recently as Thursday, U.S. luger Christian
Niccum compared ramming into the ice at
90 mph to being on fire, saying, “I just
wanted to rip off my suit, ‘I’m on fire. I’m
on fire.’ ” And nevermind that on the same
day, Australian luger Hannah Campbell-
Pegg voiced an ominous tone and a cry
for help.
“I think they are pushing it a little too
much. To what extent are we just little
lemmings that they just throw down a
track and we’re crash-test dummies?” she
said. “I mean, this is our lives.”

The Show Goes On
Georgia Vows to Honor
Luger Dies During TrainingFor Nodar
Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old luger from
the former Soviet republic of Georgia, this
would be his death. In an accident so
grisly and horrific that Canadian TV
stations suggested viewers turn away, the
young athlete died shortly after flying too
fast through the 50-50 Curve, losing
control on the final 270-degree turn,
hurdling projectile-like over an icy wall
and slamming into an unpadded — yes,
unpadded — steel pole. A rescue crew
tried to revive him trackside by pumping
his chest and giving mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation, but there was no hope.
Kumaritashvili was dead, a victim of a
sport gone mad and organizers who
weren’t paying enough attention.
So sadly, for a subtle country that aches
to show its might and efficiency, Canada
already has its defining moment of the
XXI Winter Games. Regardless of
Vancouver’s beauty or how spectacular
the competition turns out, how are we
going to forget that a luger perished
because a bunch of morons built the track
too fast? A full house of Canadians, trying
to make the best of an awful situation,
mustered cheers and energy Friday night
during the Opening Ceremony inside B.C.
Place. But frankly, they should have
postponed the Ceremony for a night out
of respect to the fallen athlete, even if
NBC protested and had to air Conan
O’Brien reruns. Only seconds into the
proceedings, the public-address man
announced somberly that the ceremony
was being dedicated to Kumaritashvili’s
memory. No matter how many lights
sparkled, how many times they played the
stirring “Oh, Canada,” how many athletes
tried to smile and how many native
singers entertained — Nelly Furtado,
Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan and k.d.
lang among them — thousands of us sat
inside the downtown dome and thought
only about the senselessness of it all.
Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash among
those lighting the Olympic cauldron at
night’s end? Didn’t faze me. I was numb,
thinking about the crash and a young
man’s family. And I sat disgusted by what
I heard from Jacques Rogge, president of
the IOC. At an afternoon news
conference, he struggled to hold back
tears when speaking of the tragedy. “This
is a very sad day. The IOC is in deep
mourning,” he said. “(Kumaritashvili) lost
his life pursuing his passion. I have no
words to say what we feel. It clearly casts
a shadow over these Games.”
But when asked why the safety warnings
weren’t heeded or addressed, Rogge
suddenly grew abrupt. “I’m sorry, this is a
time of sorrow. It’s not the time to ask for
reasons,” he said. “That time will come.”


That time is now, Jacques. Shame on you
for not answering the question with more
care. We need to know why the track was
so dangerous, why no one listened to the
lugers about safety. We need to know
why some of these Winter Games events
are too life-threatening, why we’re seeing
too many accidents like the one that left
Shaun White eating the halfpipe while
performing his dangerous Double
McTwist 1260, or the late-January wreck
that dislocated the hip of U.S. skier Daron
Rahlves and might knock him out of the
Games. I realize we’ve bemoaned the
growing irrelevance of the Winter
Olympics and have urged IOC officials to
light a spark.
The Funeral competition was not what we
had in mind.
It would be insensitive, not to mention
perilous and unsafe, to begin the men’s
two-day luge competition Saturday night.
The course must be made slower, and if it
requires postponing events for several
days or even canceling all events on the
track, so be it. Is it enough to have the
men sliders start from the women’s ramps
and lower speeds? Saturday should be
spent continuing an investigation into the
accident and the track and making sound,
safe decisions; local coroners and the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police are
conducting one probe, and the
International Luge Federation is
conducting another. Clearly, the day and
night should not be spent racing. But as
of Friday night, the competition was still
on, and women’s lugers were scheduled
to train Saturday morning. The U.S. luge
federation was reserving comment, but
Latvia federation president Atis Strenga
spoke for many when he said, “It’s a
nervous situation. It’s a big tragedy for all
luge. I hope, we all hope, it’s the first
accident and the last accident in this
race.”
Said Niccum: “When you are going that
fast, it just takes one slip and you can
have that big mistake. If you start jerking
at 90 mph or making quick reactions, that
sled will steer.”
Canada, too, should share blame. In its
zeal to not only host the Winter Games
but conquer them athletically, our
neighbors grew a bit surly in refusing to
let competing athletes use their facilities
for training. This meant many luge
athletes weren’t familiar with the track,
and we safely can assume that a racer
from Georgia was one of them. Many
athletes are angry that the Canadians,
who have spent $115 million on
increasing their usually modest medal
count, would engage in such un-Olympic
(and un-Canadian) behavior. “They’re
playing nasty,” U.S. speedskater
Catherine Raney told the New York
Times. “I think every one of us would love
to prove to them that what they did wasn’t
right, and we’re ready to show it on the
ice.”
Maybe if Kumaritashvili had been allowed
more practice time, he’d still be alive.
It seemed absurd at times to see such joy
and merriment on the stage when back in
Georgia, they were wondering what more
they had to deal with. Eighteen months
ago in Beijing, Georgian athletes
competed while their country was being
raided by Russian troops. Now, this? “It is
a nation that has gone through an awful
lot in the last three, four years,” Vice
President Joe Biden told U.S. athletes
before they marched in the Ceremony.
“It’s a small nation of 4 or 5 million
people, and the pride they had in
representing their country here at the
Olympics, and now to suffer this loss is
just tragic.”
The remaining Georgian athletes decided
to stay in Canada and compete. With
heavy hearts and sad faces, they
marched in to a warm standing ovation
from the 60,000 spectators. “They
decided to be loyal to the spirit of the
Olympic Games,” said Nikolos Rurua, the
country’s minister of culture and sport.
“They will dedicate their performances to
their fallen comrade.” Wearing red, they
slowly made their way across the snowcovered
surface. Next up was Germany,
to bouncy music, and the fans became
festive again as they welcomed 2,500
athletes from 81 other nations.
Sorry, they didn’t strike the proper tone.
Do not blame Kumaritashvili, as some will
try, for his relative lack of big-event
experience. The defending Olympic
champion, Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler,
crashed earlier Friday. If you’re on a sled,
you’re in danger. Skill level doesn’t matter
anymore in the death track of Whistler.
Already, Vancouver is off to the worst
start for an Olympic host in recent
memory. Any comparisons to Munich in
1972, which I’ve unfortunately heard, are
way off. The luge tragedy was avoidable
— and I’m not sure the same can be said
about terrorists taking 11 Israeli athletes
and coaches hostage and and murdering
them. The Games always go on, even
when a spectator was killed by a bomb 14
years ago at the Atlanta Games. And
these Games should go on.
But I’m afraid to ask what nightmare is
next. Did the IOC consider Vancouver’s
mild, rainy weather when it awarded the
WINTER Games to this otherwise
beautiful town? Where’s the snow? The X
Games events are in jeopardy at the
nearby ski hill, and up in Whistler, rain
has mixed with snow and made a mess of
training schedules and competition dates.
The women’s super-combined event, set
for Sunday at Whistler, was postponed
indefinitely. It’s good news for Lindsey
Vonn, who can rest the world’s most
famous bruised right shin, but it’s bad
news for NBC, which wanted to showcase
her in Sunday night prime time.
Twice Friday, organizers had to change
the route for the Torch Relay because of
protesters. For all of Vancouver’s charms,
including a waterfront as picturesque as
Sydney’s or any other’s, I walked through
the Downtown Eastside section on the
way to B.C. Place. It went on for blocks,
filled with drug users and prostitutes and
homeless people, and it should surprise
no one that activists from a Skid Row
neighborhood factored into the protests.
Normally, the cry of the Opening
Ceremony is, “Let the Games begin!”
Right about now, I’d like them to end
before anyone else gets hurt.

[Marcus Aurelius]

MONEY!

[terbul]

First, all condolences to the family.

Many if not most sports are inherently dangerous.

I can’t find the quote, but Jacques Villeneuve has commented on the safety around car racing. His perspective is that you make the tracks and cars reasonably safe. There is no such thing as a perfectly safe track or car. The athletes (drivers) need to drive within both the limits of the tracks and cars as well as their own (professional) abilities.

I think the questions that need to be answered (in order) are is the track faulty (although it was checked and bought off by the appropriate sports bodies), was the sled faulty, and lastly was the individual skilled enough for the track.

[CivilBarrister]

Again, all condolences to the family and loved ones.

It is the viewing public that DEMANDS faster, more dangerous EVERYTHING. Whether its sports - hell, look at the X-Games; or daredevils; or amusement parks; or NASCAR; or Actors who do their own dangerous stunts because WE, the viewing public, don't want to see the stunt doubles, etc.

Most audiences want to see the edge of the envelope; then more the edge for the next one.

The accident was tragic, and hopefully this terrible loss will not be forgotten quickly.

I think The Canadian OC gave us what most of the viewing public want....MORE Speed, danger, excitement.

[Judge Smails]

Our prayers are with him. It was horrifying.

Do I remember the old Wide World of Sports days ( and maybe the Lake Placid shute), where my recollection was that the run looked like a tube in the middle of nothing. The Vancouver run seems to have those metal poles/ stanchions that he hit in multiple places. I hope it wasn't for commecial reasons that they exist.

[CivilBarrister]

I just saw where the course was changed. They set the STARTING point about 200 feet lower to (where the Women were starting ) so the speeds will be reduced to 80-85 mph rather than the 95. BTW the World Circuit typically has speeds in the mid-80's.

Also they changed the terrible curve to give the athletes better control.

AND they build a new wall in case someone goes flying....there is something to stop them.

Its a little too late....but at least they did something to prevent another tragedy.

[grtrader]

his death was senseless and yes money was the influence these morons over the Olympics bowed down to and bed. The sad part about the incident even if they didn't reduce the speed there are a number of ways it could easily have been prevented. A plexi-glass barrier could have been installed that would have easily prevented the racer from leaving the track that way and contacting the pole.

Yea, hitting the ICE at any decent speed hurts I know from first hand experience on similar tracks. The fact is there is body gear that can be worn to dissipate he friction or keep it directly off the body and reduce the impact and would have very minimal effect on their speed. If all racers were required to wear it. Then it would even the issue out for the field and wouldn't be an issue.

The real problem is the people who continue to watch the sport. As long as people watch it and they make a profit. Then little will change. If you could get most the people to boycot it until they fixed the safety issues then well it would change pretty fast. But I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

[Guest083011]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/sp...l?ref=olympics
February 19, 2010

Before Games, Luger Filed Warnings

By JONATHAN ABRAMS and KATIE THOMAS
WHISTLER, British Columbia — An Olympic luge athlete injured in a crash at the Whistler Sliding Centre in November warned Canadian officials about safety hazards at the track months before a competitor was killed last week at the Vancouver Games in an accident on the same course.
Werner Hoeger, who competed in the Turin and Salt Lake Games for Venezuela, said he lost consciousness and sustained a concussion during a training run on Nov. 13 after his sled caromed off an opening in the wall near the women’s start ramp. His injury, he said, denied him the opportunity to qualify for these Games.
In a volley of letters and e-mail messages sent to Canadian and international luge officials since his crash, Hoeger warned that the track was unsafe and raised the same issues — including a lack of access to practice runs — now being debated after Nodar Kumaritashvili of the Republic of Georgia died last Friday.
Vancouver organizers and luge officials have said Kumaritashvili’s accident was caused by his errors and not by “deficiencies in the track,” but the top official of the Georgian Olympic committee rejected that conclusion on Thursday. “I exclude the possibility that Nodar was not experienced enough,” Giorgi Natsvlishlili, the committee’s chief, said in televised comments, according to news accounts. “From my point of view the track was at fault.”
Vancouver officials changed the course the morning after Kumaritashvili’s death, lowering the start and erecting a wall at the curve where he had gone off the track, but said the changes were made for the “emotional component” of the competition.
Hoeger noted that although his accident was not as severe as the one that caused Kumaritashvili’s death, officials reacted similarly, erecting a barricade at the area where he had crashed. “After the fact, they decided they were going to put up the wall,” Hoeger said. “These are the luge experts. They should know and understand the sport.”
As a two-time Olympian, Hoeger had the benefit of experience, but like Kumaritashvili, he was not a leading medal contender. His highest World Cup ranking was 52nd. At age 56, he was trying to become the oldest participant in the Vancouver Games in a sport in which athletes routinely compete into their late 30s and beyond.
Kumaritashvili, 21, was young and relatively new to elite competition. He was ranked 44th in the World Cup standings and had completed 26 runs on the course at Whistler. By comparison, Canada’s luge athletes had an average of 250 runs.
Hoeger and athletes from nations with underfinanced and inexperienced luge teams said Canadian officials were not sympathetic to their requests for additional practice time, although, as weaker competitors, they were unlikely to challenge for medals.
“For the smaller nations, there should have been more,” said Ioan Apostol, a former Olympic luge athlete from Romania who is the director of development for the International Luge Federation. “It is very fast and very technical at the same time.”
Apostol said he petitioned Canadian officials for extra runs for the athletes he oversees. His division provides coaching and financial assistance to countries without strong luge teams, including Georgia and Venezuela.
Although Apostol said extra runs were eventually granted, they were scheduled for a week in January when most of his athletes were competing in events in Europe and could not afford to travel to Whistler. He said he was drafting a proposal to allow more runs for less experienced teams and to limit speeds on future tracks.
Olympic host countries have traditionally guarded access to their tracks in the hopes of establishing home-course advantage, but some said that what set the Canadians apart was their reluctance to grant extra time to developing athletes. Meanwhile, athletes were attaining unprecedented speeds on the Whistler track. Designed for speeds of 137 kilometers per hour, or 85 miles per hour, the track was delivering speeds beyond 153 k.p.h., or 95 m.p.h.
The Canadians’ position was all the more frustrating, the athletes said, because they had granted extra training runs to the powerful Russian team as part of a reciprocal arrangement in advance of the Sochi Games in 2014.
“There’s two groups of people: there’s the haves and the have-nots,” said Rubén González, 47, a member of the Argentine luge team who finished in last place in the men’s singles competition Sunday.
John Gibson, a spokesman for the Whistler Sliding Centre, said in an e-mail message that those who run the site had gone out of their way to allow athletes to train there, and an international luge official said the Canadians were within the rules for providing access to the track. “We have actually surpassed the requirements set forth by the international sport federations in terms of athlete access,” Gibson said.
Hoeger, who was born in Venezuela and moved to the United States when he was 16, was hoping to qualify for the Vancouver Games but his training was stalled in the fall of 2008, when he injured an ankle while training at a course in Lake Placid, N.Y. He did not recuperate from the injury in enough time to participate in international training at the Whistler Sliding Centre. Requests for makeup runs were denied.
Hoeger returned to Whistler last February for training. After attempting to learn the course systematically from lower starting points, then progressing to the harder starts, Hoeger said officials instructed him to make his seventh run from the most challenging men’s start.
Hoeger refused, saying doing so “would be suicidal” because he had not yet learned the course. “I had heard enough horror stories,” Hoeger said. “Every athlete treats this track with the utmost respect. Nearly every athlete is scared to death of this track.”
He returned a final time in November 2009 for the designated international training session. On his fourth run from the men’s start, he crashed because he said a barricade was not in place to prevent his sled from hitting the entrance ramp at the women’s start. He believes he lost consciousness between Curves 2 and 3. Medical officials took him by ambulance to the Whistler Health Care Centre. Hoeger said he sustained a third-grade concussion. A lawyer with the Vancouver Organizing Committee acknowledged in writing Hoeger was injured on the course, calling it “terribly unfortunate,” but the extent of the brain injury Hoeger sustained could not be independently verified.
The same day as the accident, officials notified athletes that a barricade “will be in place whenever men’s start is in use.”
Hoeger’s chafing over the November accident and previous lack of access to the track escalated into a series of exchanges between him and officials from the International Olympic Committee, the International Luge Federation, the Vancouver organizing committee and the Canadian Luge Association. At one point, Hoeger’s lawyer, Bryan Storer, also exchanged messages with officials. In an interview, Storer said Hoeger had not decided whether to sue.
Hoeger said he wrote the letters, copies of which he provided to The New York Times, when he was not allowed to make up training sessions. “I knew I was done after the crash,” Hoeger said of his goal to make the Games.
He demanded that Ed Moffat of Canada be removed as race director for luge at the Olympics, that all athletes be offered equal runs in the future, that Canada forfeit the surplus runs negotiated for the 2014 Sochi Games and that the Canadian Luge Association be reprimanded for unethical actions and failing to provide a safe sliding environment.
“I have to question the integrity of the Canadian Luge Association and the fairness of the next Olympic Games to be held on Canadian soil,” he wrote in a November letter to Moffat.
In a letter responding to Hoeger’s demands, Svein Romstad, secretary general of the International Luge Federation, said that Moffat had acted with integrity, that the Canadians had the right to enter into training arrangements with other teams and that they had followed all international luge rules. His request for makeup runs, Romstad wrote, could “only be defined as special treatment if it had been granted.”
Romstad said in an interview that the Canadians granted requests for additional training time after it became clear that athletes were attaining speeds in excess of 137 k.p.h, or 85 m.p.h., the original estimate of the track’s maximum speed.
He said the training in January was set aside for athletes from unseeded teams, with the intent of giving less experienced competitors additional time to train. But ultimately, allocating track time is the responsibility of the Canadians, he said.
“The F.I.L. does not own the track,” he said.
Although Romstad said he sympathized with athletes like Hoeger and others, “I have to go with what is right and wrong within our rules,” he said.
Katie Thomas reported from Vancouver, British Columbia.



Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[Exotic Lily]

I'm sure there will be a huge settlement to the family.

[atlcomedy]

bump....haven't heard much about the Olympics on eccie since this....I heard there is a hockey match in about an hour...anyone watching?

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by atlcomedy

bump....haven't heard much about the Olympics on eccie since this....I heard there is a hockey match in about an hour...anyone watching?

US lost in overtime to Canada, 3-2.