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Athletes Who Paid the Ultimate Price
On February 12, 2010, a luger from the Central Asian nation of Georgia lost his life in a Winter Olympics training accident. Nodar Kumaritshavii was heading down the final turn of the Whistler Sliding Center when he lost control of his sled, flew over the wall and smashed into an unpadded steel pole near the finish line. It’s unclear how fast Mr. Kumaritshavii was going but speeds of 90 mph and above are par for this course.
There had been ominous indications that this track was more dangerous than your run of the mill luge course. Earlier in the day, the gold medal favorite from Italy crashed on Curve 11 and ended up sliding down the course on his back. Another incident resulted in a Romanian female luger’s temporary loss of consciousness.
Apparently, padding the steel pole wouldn’t have saved Mr. Kumaritshavii’s life, given the G-forces involved. But the track changes made after the accident—shortening the course, softening some of the surfaces, etc.—might have.
Other Winter Olympic Athletes Who Were Killed
No Winter Olympic athlete has ever died in actual competition. But Nodar Kumaritshavii is the third to be killed in training before the games. Curiously, the other 2 fatalities occurred at the same Olympics—the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.
Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski: The British luger lost her life when she careened off the course in a practice run in Igls, Austria, a few days before the Games started.
Ross Milne: The Australian alpine skier caught an edge during a practice run and crashed into a tree. The IOC blamed the accident on Milne’s inexperience; the manager of the Australian ski team said it was the result of overcrowding. Milne tried to slow down to avoid plowing into a crowd of contestants, according to the manager’s account.
U.S. Figure Skating team: This one wasn’t an Olympics-related tragedy but it deserves noting. On Feb. 15, 1961, the team was flying to the World Championships in Prague on Sabena Flight 548. They never made it. The plane went down and all team members, their family aboard, coaches and officials were killed.
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Knowing the speed sports are indeed dangerous, one has to ask if the coaches should have been more involved in the decisions made as to where the training runs should have been started. The Whistler Sliding Center was known to be the fastest track ever made!The athletes unfamiliar with their respective work environments should have been run through the course gradually as would be the course of action for rookie sliders, and in most work environments. The Georgian athlete was an inexperienced slider and had troubles with the runs previous to his fatal run. I believe he had made a call back to his homeland to speak to his father (a former Luger) about the fear he had regarding this particular track, which lets one think of what advice, if any, was given regarding his uncertainty and unfamiliarity of the track. I hope companies choose to be a more proactive participant in their workers abilities prior to sending them to their respective work environments. It was indeed a sad day for sports. Sport is the athletes chosen career and I believe additional training could have prevented this terrible incident, after all, the most experienced sliders(Canadians)on this track, did not have the difficulty the other nations were encountering. I would not lay the majority of blame on the track design or the workmanship of the surface as much as I do the lack of training.