Saturday, February 13, 2010

Luge Events Suspended at Vancouver Olympic Games

Safety at the Vancouver Olympic luge track was a concern leading up to the February 12th fatal Luge accident involving twenty-one year old Georgian Nodar Kumaritashvili.

Before that training run, athletes were clocking course records and getting into dangerous high-speed crashes. It is thought that the Whistler course is the world's fastest and most dangerous.

Just prior to Kumaritashvili's fatal crash, Italy's Armin Zoeggeler, the defending Olympic champion, lost control of his sled in the first run of the day. Zoeggeler was able to walk away from the accident and appeared uninjured. However, on the day before a Romanian athlete named Violeta Stramaturaru had to be airlifted out after a crash.

The crashes came after Austrian Manuel Pfister clocked the fastest luge speed ever recorded. On February 11, he managed to clock 154 km/h which slightly tops 153.98 km/h, set at Whistler in 2009.

After learning that a Olympic luge athlete died after a fatal injury, Josef Benz, the chair of the International Luge Federation was pondering whether to cancel or postpone luge events out of a lack of track safety. As of early February 13th, no decision had been reached. Benz was a Swiss bobsledder who competed in two Winter Olympics, and won one gold.

The current Olympic course features several dangerous technical elements, including a massive 152-metre drop. The drop is the world's longest and is approximately equal to 48 stories. The 1,450-metre course includes 16 turns. One such turn is referred to as 50/50 because the athletes feel their chances of making it safely through the corner were the same as a coin flip.

Olympic champion Zoeggeler predicted that racers would top 155 km/h at the Vancouver Olympics. The International Luge Federation wants to impose speed limits on the next courses to be built out of a concern for athlete safety. They are suggesting that 155 km/hr will be the top limit allowable.

However, speed is not the only issue. Serious concerns have been raised about the pole Kumaritashvili hit. Why wasn't the pole padded. You can see from the pictures that the pole was in close proximity to the track and it was conceivable that an athlete might strike the pole. Maybe padding would not have saved his life, but it's a question which still needs to be answered.

Officials from other countries believe it was irresponsible for Canadian authorities to limit practice times to only 40 training runs. The Canadian athletes had access to more than 300 training runs. It would appear that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

[Update: The luge events will proceed on schedule. Less than 24 hours after the fatal crash, the track was reopened. The officials have decided to raise the wall that the former Olympic athlete careened over. In a joint statement, the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee and luge’s international governing body blamed the athlete, and not the track for the accident.

“It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16,” the statement said. “This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem he eventually lost control of the sled resulting in the tragic accident. The technical officials of the FIL were able to retrace the path of the athlete and concluded there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track.”]

The safety of all athletes is a paramount concern. The death of a luge athlete at the Vancouver Olympic Games has brought this to the attention of the world.


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