WHISTLER, British Columbia — It took only three seconds.
Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, had one turn left in his final Olympic training run Friday. Flirting with 90 mph, the luger from the Republic of Georgia tilted his head slightly forward as his sled climbed the high-banked wall.
Kumaritashvili lost control, crashing into the wall entering the final straightaway. His body went airborne, arms and legs flailing over the opposite side of the track, his upper body smashing into an unpadded steel pole as his sled continued skidding down the track.
Paramedics began working on Kumaritashvili within seconds, quickly starting chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, all to no avail.
The IOC said Kumaritashvili was pronounced dead at a trauma center in Whistler.
Less than an hour after the accident, a representative from each team was told the grim news. With that, tears began flowing across the close-knit sliding world and throughout the Olympic family.
“I have no words to say what we feel,” a teary International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said.
The incident fatally underscored a growing concern among lugers that the track at the $100 million Whistler Slider Centre, considered the fastest in the world, is too fast. Since training began Wednesday, dozens of lugers have failed to negotiate the course in which speeds are topping 90 mph.
Those who have crashed include Armin Zoeggeler, Italy’s two-time defending gold medalist. A Romanian woman was knocked unconscious in one run. Four U.S. women struggled to reach the bottom of the course.
“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg told reporters after she nearly lost control in a training run. “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.”
Security officials closed access to the crash area and the remainder of the track after Friday’s accident, and all further training runs were canceled. Women’s luge Olympians were scheduled to train at the track this morning, nine hours before the men’s two-day competition is set to begin.
“It is a nervous situation,” Latvian luge federation president Atis Strenga said. “I hope, we all hope, it’s the first accident and the last accident in this race.”
The danger of the Whistler track has been talked about for months — particularly after several countries, including the U.S., were upset with restrictions over access to the facility by nations other than Canada, some noting it could lead to a safety issue.
Some sliders, especially those from small luge federations, saw the world’s fastest track this week for the first time.
“When you are going that fast, it just takes one slip and you can have that big mistake,” U.S. doubles luger Christian Niccum said Thursday, when asked about track safety. “All of us are very calm going down, but if you start jerking at 90 mph or making quick reactions, that sled will steer. That’s the difference between luge and bobsled and skeleton. We’re riding on a very sharp edge and that sled will go exactly where we tell it to, so you better be telling it the right things on the way down.”
Officials in Vancouver and Whistler stressed that no decisions regarding what happens next would be made before the initial investigation is complete.
Rogge said he was in contact with both Kumaritashvili’s family and officials from the Georgian government. The remaining seven members of the Georgian Olympic delegation said they would stay in the Games and dedicated their performances to their fallen teammate.
The crash was Kumaritashvili’s second during training. His last recorded speed Friday was 89.4 mph, measured near the last curve. He was on a higher path line down the final turns of the track than most sliders prefer, and the combination of speed and gravitational pull was too much for his 176-pound body.
Sliding diagonally, Kumaritashvili smashed into a corner entering the final straightaway feet-first. He was knocked off his sled and sailed in the other direction, coming to rest on a metal walkway after his upper body smashed into the post.
This would have been Kumaritashvili’s first Olympics. He competed in five World Cup races this season, finishing 44th in the world standings.
