This language is inappropriate for MPSIMS – knock it off.
It’s also inappropriate for The Game Room, which is where I’m moving this thread.
Fact is, despite the organizers and officials initially saying that the design “wasn’t to blame” (or words to that effect), they then went ahead and started the event from the woman’s gate – a good two football fields shorter thus lessening the average maximum speed by a good 5/8 mph – AND walled the part with the exposed beams. Anyone that saw the coverage of the event last night surely must be aware of this.
So while their words said one thing, their actions proved all the critics (including the armchair experts here and elsewhere) correct. As an armchair critic myself, and one with no experience whatsoever in the sport, I thought it pretty obvious that the design at the point of the accident was a death-trap.
I got curious enough to look it up. According to this site, six athletes and one team doctor have died in Olympic competition or practice sessions. Most of the deaths have been in the Winter Games, which haven’t been running as long and which have fewer participants, so clearly the winter sports have more danger associated with them. Two of those killed among the winter athletes have been lugers, one an Alpine skier, and one a speed skier (a demonstration sport at Albertville, fortunately discontinued). The team doctor was killed on an Alpine skiing course in a collision with snow grooming equipment. Of the two summer athletes, one was a cyclist in the days before doping tests, who died with a hefty dose of amphetemines in his body; the other was a marathon runner back in 1912, who died of dehydration and heat exhaustion - things marathoners know more about how to prevent today.
(This list does not include the eleven Israeli athletes and support staff killed by terrorists in 1972.)
Really, I’m astounded that there have been so few deaths. I don’t think anyone has kept statistics of this, but I would bet that there have been more than seven spectator deaths during Olympic competitions through the years, from heart attacks and so on.
Deaths in athletic competitions are rare and should be so, but weird stuff happens and to expect no deaths in sports is unreasonable.
Incidentally, for those in favor of padding the columns, look at the padding used in speed skating (regular or short-track). It’s quite thick and meant to break away when hit hard enough. Now consider the relative speeds of the skaters and a guy on a luge sled, and add the fact that the columns can’t break away… that would have to be some mighty impressive padding.
I haven’t looked very closely at how the track looks in that turn, but a wall would let the luger slide, and remain inside the track, instead of slamming into a column. Padding probably has limited utility.
Found this article on the NYT which further illustrates the points I made before: Quick to Blame in Luge
** – click link for further track analysis.
I’ve merged this thread with the one entitled “No sports mistake is supposed to be fatal” - are you stupid, or mimicking Borat?.
As per twickster’s advice, please remember to keep this discussion civil.
Ellen Cherry
Game Room Moderator
A very sad turn of events. And it’s disgusting that the IOC is covering its ass so quickly at the guy’s expense- but it’s not surprising.
Slight hijack, but isn’t the event known as the Skeleton also performed on the same track, along with Bobsledding?
Don’t be so quick to dismiss padding as being irrelevant. The different between going from 90 mph to zero instantly, and doing it while decelerating over 6 inches of padding, can be quite dramatic. It probably wouldn’t have saved this guy’s life, since he hit the beam dead on at maximum speed, but if he hadn’t contacted with his head, the padding could have absorbed some energy and caused him to deflect off a bit.
But the big problem was that the columns were exposed at all. They should have had a plexiglas wall in front of them like a hockey arena.
This is clearly not true - there have been many crashes on that course. No one has sustained so much as a broken bone while staying inside the track. The fact that after the first impact the guy was still going almost the same speed tells you that the ice didn’t absorb much energy from the first impact, which means it probably didn’t do a lot of damage to him.
WARNING: In extremely poor taste, so I use a spoiler book. Open at your own risk
: Don Imus use to describe the luge as "the only Olympic sport you can compete in even if you are dead
It easily could. With the supports being right next to the track, any luger who exits said track on that side is almost certain to slam into one of them, with no chance for deceleration, at an almost perpendicular angle. If you put some distance between the track and the beams, however, there are two differences. First, the luger will be approaching the beams at a different angle, so that he has a chance to pass through a gap or strike a beam with a glancing (i.e. less certainly fatal) blow. Second, the luger will have a chance to skid on the ground (and thus gradually decelerate) before striking something solid.
Of course, erecting barriers to keep a luger on the course is a better alternative all around, for the reasons Sam Stone mentions. While a high velocity glancing blow off of a low-friction surface is potentially quite dangerous, it’s nowhere near as bad as slamming flush into a steel column and thus decelerating from 90 MPH to 0 in about .01 seconds. Attempts here to equate the two are a little confusing to me.
You can’t compare the other athlete’s accidents to this as if there is any parity. He clearly misjudged the turn and hit the inside corner of the track. He bounced hard enough to move up and over the other side of the track. He didn’t slide over the track in the curve of the trough, he bounced.
The track is 10 mph faster than what the designers had planned and has already seen speeds of 97 mph. The more experienced athletes can handle it but Nodar Kumaritashvili was afraid of it. It’s too fast using the men’s starting gate.