David Harding
TheDevourerGeorgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili dies
February 13th 2010 05:33
Several luge athletes have warned officials that the Vancouver course was unusually dangerous one such athlete Australia's Hannah Campbell-Pegg, 27, nearly lost control of her luge during practice on Thursday night. "I think they are pushing it a little too much," she said. "To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we're crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives." reported News.com.au.
This i the second crash in two days and the German mastermind behind the track has also admitted that safety modifications are needed following this fatal crash that has claimed a life before the Olympics has started. "We now have to consider how we can alter the piste. At the exit area we could increase the height of the walls by some 40 to 50 centimeters,'' he told German sports daily Sport Bild.
Georgia have announced they will still stay in Vancouver, for the cermony and participate in the Winter Olympics and pay tribute to their fallen team mate Nodar Kumaritashvili. Nodar Kumaritashvili’s fatal crash during training Friday was not due to his inexperience, said the country’s minister for culture and sport, Nikolos Rurua. “I’d like to especially stress one point. As questions were raised to his [level of] experience, I’d like to inform you that he was from a place in Georgia with long snow sports tradition,” said Mr. Rurua, noting that Kumaritashvili had taken 11th in training yesterday and had been ranked 44th so far on this season's World Cup circuit. “He was well-qualified, very hard worker in this particular field. Insinuations and speculation about his experience to me seems a little unfair and misleading.” said Nickolos Rurua in an interview posted by Christian Science Monitoring.
The luge will not be the only event to be canceled should the track be blamed for the crash, any other events that are going to be participating on this course will be removed from the Olympic program. To date no athelete has ever been killed during the Winter Olympic games. Tragedy has struck the Winter Olympics prior to the event Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski died during training shortly before the Games started. The organising committee said that Ross caught an edge and subsequently crashed into a tree. The IOC suggested that inexperience may have played a role in Ross's death, whereas Australian manager John Wagner suggested that overcrowding played a role, saying that he tried to slow down. "on a spot which was not prepared for stopping or swinging" to avoid a crowd of contestants. His brother Malcolm Milne competed at the 1968 and 1972 Winter Olympics.
On February 15, 1961, the entire US Figure Skating team and several family members, coaches, and officials were killed when Sabena Flight 548 crashed in Brussels, Belgium en route to the World Championships in Prague. The U.S skating program was sent into a long period of rebuilding following this tragedy, the loss of the U.S team was considered so catastrophic for the sport that the 1961 World Championships were cancelled which later effected the Winter Olympics.
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