VANCOUVER — Faster, higher, deadlier?
There is blood on the Olympic luge track and a corpse to ship home from the morgue. Before a gold, silver or bronze medal can be awarded, we need to issue a death certificate for a 21-year-old athlete.
Let the Winter Games begin with tears.
“We are in deep mourning,” International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Friday, after a young Eurasian competitor named Nodar Kumaritashvili was ejected from his sled during a practice run, spun like a rag doll and flew into a pillar that killed him with a grotesque thud.
Even before this death, there was a macabre theme emerging at these Olympics. Danger sells. Big crashes make for must-see TV.
Have we become so addicted to thrills that the Winter Games have a death wish?
What makes us look at competition on sleds, snowboards and winter toys that most Americans will never own is the chance to vicariously live on the edge without ever rising from our comfy spot on the sofa. The line between sports and stunts has been blurred. The Olympics are a video game where the wrecks are real.
“When you get an injury or you get somebody who goes down or there are some big crashes, it really shocks people,” gold medal snowboarder and extreme sports icon Shaun White said less than 24 hours before a luger from the Republic of Georgia died crashing at 90 mph in a hairpin turn. “That’s just what we do. We fall, we get back up and we try it again.”
Harder than ice, sharper than a razor’s edge, faster than any posted speed limit, what gives the Winter Olympics a double shot of adrenaline is the fear factor that shouts: Do not try this at home.
“The sport, I don’t think, has gotten more dangerous. Obviously, it was dangerous to begin with,” White said. “We drive around in cars, and that’s pretty dangerous. But we still do it.”
Whether you are the king of the Olympic mountain standing tall in the starting gate or just a weekend ski warrior such as myself awkwardly sliding into a 40-degree chute lined with rocks, the magnetic attraction of extreme sports is the same.
As the heartbeat tries to pound a hole in the chest, there are conflicting voices rattling inside your skull, with a crazy daredevil on one shoulder, while, in the other ear, your mother begs you to come home before you break a leg.
“It’s an amazing feeling when you are afraid and you acknowledge it and push past it,” snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler of Aspen said. “I will never say I’m fearless. I feel like it’s my job to be afraid every single day I’m on the hill.”
The freedom to push the boundaries of safety should reside solely with the athlete. Freedom is just another word for being as crazy as you wanna be. Prudence, however, is the sober responsibility of Olympic organizers. Isn’t dangling gold in front of a competitor to perform a stupid human trick the definition of exploitation?
It’s precisely this shady gray area where the story of Kumaritashvili’s death in turn 16 of the Whistler Sliding Center gets sticky. On the same track where skeleton racers and bobsled teams seem destined to set Olympic speed records, it has been suggested by competitors that they are being treated like crash-test dummies.
When U.S. luge veteran Tony Benshoof first rode the course, a thought crossed his mind: Somebody is going to get killed. American skeleton racer Eric Bernotas said: “It’s a quick dance, for sure. It’s rock ‘n’ roll.”
Desperately seeking a homecourt advantage in Canada’s chest-thumping, look-at-us-now quest to win the medal count, has the blood of Kumaritashvili stained the maple leaf of the host country’s flag? It has been well- documented Canada has severely restricted practice time by foreign rivals on the sliding track since construction was finished in 2008. Katie Uhlaender of Breckenridge has wondered aloud if this manifestation of Canada’s own-the-podium attitude violated the Olympic spirit.
Faster, higher, deadlier? Was the luge track stupid fast? Could a death that haunted the opening ceremony of these Games been avoided?
“This is a time for sorrow,” Rogge insisted. “It is not the time to look for reasons.”
Why ask why?
From the instant Kumaritashvili pushed his sled from the start, he was gone in 50 seconds. Dreams die fast. Then the Olympics ceased to be a game. Videos of the fatal crash spread like a virus on the Internet. The gory footage was erased ASAP.
No need to ask why.
We love the danger — until it makes us feel guilty.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
