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Georgian Olympic luger dies during practice
Published: 13 February, 2010, 03:31
Edited: 17 February, 2010, 22:47
A men’s luge contestant died Friday after his sled crashed during a practice run in Whistler, Canada. Nodar Kumaritashvilli reportedly lost control of his sled, flying off the track and slamming into a steel pole.
The loss of an Olympic athlete of the stature of Nodar Kumaritashvilli is a great loss for the international community. I express my deepest sympathies to the Georgian people, who must be devastated by this crushing event. This is the untimely loss of a highly promising athlete and the luge contest will never be the same. We feel the pain of the Georgian people, Mr. Saakashvilli's misdemeanors notwithstanding.
It is bad to for Georgian Olympic but is this a punichment for what Sakasvilly did under last Olympic games? Georgia start a war the same day as Bejing Olympic games startet and killing many hundre people. This is a punichment against the Georgian nation and DESPOTEN SAKASVILLY for what they did agains Sout Ossetia. We can just hope he is not so mad that he do it one more time.
What a terrible tragedy! My deepest sympathy to his family and his teammates.
What a tragic start to the Olympics, and such a loss to the Georgian team. The radio here said his father was also a luge athlete. Also the team members were wearing black armbands over their uniforms. God comfort them and his family. @ Lori, yes the track design should be reviewed. What have other luge athletes said about that track?
I feel sorry for him and his family. That said, who in the world approved the design of the end of the track with those EXPOSED STEEL COLUMNS right after a SHARP curve, NEXT to the track! It must have been the same engineer who designed the French tunnel with the exposed columns right down the center where Princess Diana was killed. I'm still mad about that, not because I was in love with Diana, but because of the work she was doing to ban land mines. Anything that someone can hit by going off a road or course, they will. There is a long, straight stretch, of a divided part of Interstate Highway 10 in East New Orleans, about 10 km long. About 40 years ago, two overpasses were built across it. The support columns are about 7 meters from the edge of the roadway. They are the only thing you can hit along the entire lenght of highway, because the highway is through a marsh. The roadway is three lanes wide in each direction. Yet, people still manage to occasionally run off the road, across the dirt, and hit the columns, even during the day.
I would like to see who did and approved this run design. It is regretfully that this happened in Canada where ``we are all`` concerned with SAFETY – or this is what I like to believe. In Canada engineering design for public/government is typically done by a Professional Engineers. My question is where was the safety net that was supposed to be provided for this risky 50/50 run … In the end - We are so cheap…