The death of luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili was caused by error on the part of the Georgian, not by the track, Olympic officials say. The Olympic organizing committee's statement said, “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. 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.”
Kumaritashvili's death occurred yesterday during a practice run at the Whistler Sliding Centre course before the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. While there was speculation about the 21-year-old's experience level (he was ranked 44th in World Cup standing), there was also concern about the course—Canadian Olympic officials offered minimum access to the track and even luge champion Armin Zoeggeler of Italy crashed during a training run. The track's walls at turn 16 are being raised as a preventative measure "to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again." It's believed that Kumaritashvili was going just under 90 mph before he lost control of his luge, flew over the wall and slammed into a concrete pillar (graphic here).
The Daily News' Filip Bondy criticizes the track's design, noting, "There were significant problems, and officials knew about them. The very morning of this tragedy, the Calgary Herald wrote a piece about the dangers. After Manuel Pfister of Austria broke the record on Thursday at 96mph, a spokesman for the International Luge Federation suggested that speed limits were required for the next Olympic track 'for sure.' Safety is only important, it seems, in the future. In the present, the International Olympic Committee has been far too worried about television ratings, about spectacle, about cutting the X Games off at the knees."
