Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 13, 2010

Tragedy struck yesterday at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada when Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luge athlete from Georgia, was killed in a crash while training on the Olympic track at the Whistler Sliding Center. Google’s home page logo, with that of a luger in it, pays tribute to the 21-year-old Kumaritashvili.

UPDATE: A few hours after today’s Google logo with the luger was displayed, as shown above, the home page logo was replaced with that of a snowboarder, shown below:

Reported by Garrett Rogers at ZDNet:

Today’s logo on Google was not meant to be tasteless I’m sure, but some people thought it was. It was actually a beautiful looking logo with a luger in place of the first logo. However, some people think Google’s logo was published too soon after the death of Olympian, Nodar Kumaritashvili, during his last practice luge run before the opening ceremonies in Vancouver.

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A number of Olympians reportedly had expressed concern — prior to Kumaritashvili’s fatal crash — that the Olympic luge track went too fast and was potentially dangerous.

In this photo, luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia is seen at the start of his first training run on Friday. He crashed during his second run. | Photo credit: Elise Amendola / Associated Press

At Olympics Fan House, Jay Mariotti, covering the Winter Olympics, wrote A Fast-Track Tragedy: Shame on Olympics… here is a portion:

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.”

For 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.

From theage.com.au, Luge to go ahead after fatal crash:

AUSTRALIA’S winter Olympians went into nervous lockdown last night after the death of Georgian luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili raised questions about track safety in the sliding sports at the Winter Olympic Games.

Australian athletes, including the nation’s lone representative in the luge, Hannah Campbell-Pegg, were asked not to comment about the incident or any safety concerns, as the Australian team sought to respect the death of 21-year-old Kumaritashvili, and minimise damage to the confidence of team members.

The death of the Georgian, who crashed heavily on the final turn of the course, shocked both organisers and athletes.

The Georgian team vowed to stay on at the Games, pending an investigation by the International Luge Federation.

The track was declared safe, but the federation ordered modifications to the curve on which the athlete crashed. It said the men’s singles competition would begin today (Melbourne time) as scheduled.

Kumaritashvili struck the track wall, becoming airborne and sailing over the lip of the wall, striking a pole. His sled and face visor remained on the track. His face was covered in blood as officials tried to revive him.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was moved to tears at a press conference held shortly after Kumaritashvili died from his injuries near the Whistler sliding course.

From New York Daily News: Nodar Kumaritashvili dies in vain if IOC doesn’t make changes to ‘deadly’ events:

VANCOUVER – In the end, it wasn’t the halfpipe or the freestyle aerials that turned the Winter Olympics into a gallows. It was a slippery-sloped luge track, designed by someone who didn’t know the sport and nurtured by a system that rewards outrageous risk-taking.

Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, a luger from the nation of Georgia, lost his sled Friday and then his life, after his body was hurled grotesquely into an unpadded metal pillar following a crash at the bottom of the course.

There were no bales of hay, no padded pillars to soften his flight. Emergency medical technicians stuck a plastic tube into his lungs, tried their very best to resuscitate him. It was hopeless. Kumaritashvili was dead about seven hours before the Opening Ceremony, before the world was supposed to celebrate the start of the Winter Games. Speed killed, as is its unrelenting habit.

The Whistler Sliding Centre on Glacier Lane has the reputation among lugers for being slick and super-fast, even under ideal conditions. In a recent interview with CTVOlympics.ca, the architect, Laurenz Kosichek, admitted he was more a designer of office towers and airports. “I knew as much about bobsled, luge, as probably any average person does, which was next to nothing,” Kosichek said. “Luckily, I think I’m a pretty quick study.”

Never as fast as those sleds, however, which were reaching record speeds on some stretches of the track. Kumaritashvili was ranked only 44th in the world, but this accident had little to do with his level of expertise. There had been a series of increasingly ugly crashes during training runs.

Earlier Friday, the gold-medal favorite in the event, Armin Zoeggeler of Italy, slammed into a wall and lost his sled. Stefan Hoehener of Switzerland and Guntis Rekis of Latvia crashed, and Rekis later told reporters, “I was scared a bit.” The Americans were having difficulty navigating the track, too.

Don’t blame the victim here.

Despite the grief felt over Georgia's luger's death, Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony was upbeat, spectacular

From NJ.com, Associated Press, Olympic opening ceremonies are upbeat, despite luger’s death:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In time-honored tradition, the show went on.

Despite the training-run death earlier in the day of a luger from the country of Georgia, the Olympics’ opening ceremonies unfolded in a mostly jubilant atmosphere, with an upbeat crowd filling BC Place Stadium.

The festive mood, including a snowboarder’s leap through giant Olympic rings, contrasted sharply with the grief that befell the games earlier in the day when luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a horrific crash on the sliding track at Whistler.

The ceremonies were dedicated to Kumaritashvili, and a moment of silence was observed in his memory. The seven remaining members of the Georgian team, who decided to stay and compete, wore black armbands as they marched behind a black-trimmed flag. Most of the crowd rose to give respectful applause.

From Detroit Free Press, Mark Grimmette: Condolences to luger’s family:

Five-time U.S. Olympic luger Mark Grimmette of Muskegon said Friday afternoon that he was heartbroken to learn about the death of the men’s singles slider from the country of Georgia, and that he’ll be carrying the U.S. flag “with a heavy heart” into Friday night’s Opening Ceremonies.

“My heartfelt condolences go out to the family of the Georgian slider,” Grimmette told the Free Press by phone as he was on a bus traveling to BC Place Stadium.

Grimmette, 39, said he was at the Athletes Village when he learned that Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, had died while training on the track at the Whistler Olympic Sliding Centre. Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled and struck a steel pole near the finish line. He was transported to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Grimmette, who was selected as U.S. flag bearer Thursday, has won two Olympic medals in his career with Brian Martin (Palo Alto, Calif.). He and Martin crashed during on the Olympic track at the 2006 Torino Winter Games but weren’t injured.

From Toronto Sun, Canada’s Fault?:

WHISTLER — Did Canada’s quest for an Olympic home-field advantage go too far?

That’s the question being asked after one of the most perilous sliding courses in the world turned deadly Friday morning.

Officials and athletes from around the world will soon move from mourning to a state of outrage over the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. And with the fallout will come fury.

As the Games get underway, many of those same Olympians will angrily be questioning whether the death could have been avoided.

An offshoot of the Own The Podium strategy put in place by the Canadian Olympic Committee was to limit athletes from around the world access to the facilities both here and in Vancouver.

The host nation’s brazen blueprint for success has been a developing story as the Games grew near. And now it has turned to tragedy.

When the grieving makes way for anger, the COC will become a target of the wrath.

[...]

Campbell-Pegg was not the lone voice of criticism. From the Americans to the Europeans to the Aussies, concerns about the safety of the track and the lack of access to it was a sore point.

In a dramatic bit of foreshadowing, Andy Schmid, the performance director of British Skeleton, openly expressed his fear that tragedy would strike in one of the three disciplines — luge, skeleton and bobsled.

“Please, let there be no accidents because that could kill the sport,” Schmid, told England’s The Daily Telegraph.

“People have the argument that it’s just home advantage and that’s normal for an Olympic host country, but it’s different for sports involving high speed.

“Can you imagine in Formula One nobody being allowed on a track because somebody has home advantage?”

No one is suggesting the Canadians shouldn’t be looking for an edge, because in the world of international amateur sports, such behavior is considered fair play.

But when the safety of the athletes becomes an issue, is it not clear the envelope has been pushed too far?

Related reading:
Gateway Pundit: Olympic Luger Thrown From Sled & Hits Steel Pole – Dies (Graphic Video)
Patterico’s Pontifications: Luge Death at the Olympics
Byline to Finish Line: Finding Olympic spirit in tragedy
DuniyaLive.com: Luge Crash Death: Nodar Kumaritashvili was not a reckless driver, claims Georgia
News Daily: Luge death darkens mood as Winter Games open

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