Olympic luger expressed fear day before death - http://sports.espn.go.com/olympics/w...r_espn_4914998
seems a little odd considering another article yesterday that I linked to had a phone conversation on the same day as this supposedly took place with his last words being "you should be proud of me" with no mention of the fear...
I saw this luger's mother on the news. She was very distraught and said that her son and Nodar had grown up together and were luging together since childhood. It would have been impossible for him to overcome this in such a short period of time.Originally Posted by Tigger
I think the media is hyping up the whole "Georgian luger was terrified of the track." I think he knew it was a hard course and was scared of one of the turns but not so much that he wasn't going to do it. Everyone is "scared" (or should i say daunted) of this track, even the veterans (one of whom calls a turn "the 50-50 turn" because that is your chance of making it.) The luge federation president even stated that this track worried him when he first saw it. This kid was luging his whole life, his dad was also a luger. As "inexperienced" as he was, he was still an Olympic caliber luger. Most lugers come into their prime in their late 30's, early 40's (like gold medal favorite Zoeggler). Age and experience play a great role in luging. VANOC and the luge designers don't want to admit negligence for legal reasons, but there was plenty wrong with this track. It was too fast, it has exposed steel beams (could have used flexible fiberglass instead), and yeah, the walls could have been raised or other additional protections could have been implemented at the harder turns. No doubt there was some driver error involved, but there should have precautions to predict and accomodate that.
That's EXACTLY what my comment was going to be! NASCAR used to be considered inerently dangerous to one's life. No more. Wihout taking any excitement out of the the sport, they managed to actually make it safe!
I'm not arguing with the fact that Kumaritashvili made a mistake - I'm perfectly willing to stipulate to that. However, a mistake shouldn't cost an athlete his life.
This. The point of the whole argument that is still raging. This one sentence sums it all up.
All the brouhaha by the Canadians and the IOC is in order to cover this up.
There was a report yesterday that many lugers were worried about the safety of the track.
Except we won't hear any more comments about it, because they are now prohibited from talking about the track at all, per official orders (this comes from Eurosport media review, I don't remembere which paper wrote this.)
I agree that the track itself is not the main problem, but the lack of proper safety precations.
I feel horrible for the Gergian luger and his family and I pray there won't be any more serious accidents.
Everybody hopes there won't be any more serious accidents. Of course nobody wants to see one, but luging is inherently a dangerous sport. Downhill skiing is inherently a dangerous sport. There are multiple crashes in every downhill race and unfortunately there have occasionally been fatal accidents. Nascar racing is inherantly a dangerous sport and again, unfortunately, there have been fatal crashes. Shaun White's half pipe snowboard friend and teammate is in a coma in a Colorado hospital as we speak due to an accident on a half pipe course. Is there any demand to close down that snowboard course? Of course not. It's tragic the Georgian luger was killed. It's also completely over the top to start placing blame on the Canadian officials for this terribly unfortunate accident. A luger was killed in a training accident for the '64 Innsbruck Olympics. It happens. Car accidents happen. If something can be learned from this terrible tragedy that's all good but please, let's back off some of these crazier statements.
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