Officials responsible for the luge competitions at the Vancouver Olympics today announced the starting gate would be lowered to reduce speeds and ease “emotional” concerns of the athletes a day after a slider from Georgia was killed there.
They have also raised the wall where the accident occured and changed the “ice profile” in hopes of keeping athletes on the track if they crash in that section.
“This is to ensure that the athletes who still have to get on that ice do so in a positive way,” said Tim Gayda, vice president for sport of the Vancouver Organizing Committee. “We still want an Olympic competition, but we have to be respectful of those athletes – their friend died on that track.”
Nodar Kumaritashvili died when he lost control of his sled, flew off the track and struck a pole. He was the first luge athlete to die in competition since 1975. No luge athlete has died at the Olympics since the sport was introduced to the Olympic program in 1964.
Training runs will go on this morning as scheduled, and the men’s singles competition is still scheduled for 6 p.m. MST today.
“None of our athletes have experienced this (before),” said Svein Romstad, secretary general if the International Luge Federation. “They lost a friend. It is emotional for everyone.”
Romstad said Kumaritashvili appeared to be having a routine run until curve 15, when he was late executing his exit from the turn and late steering into the next curve.
“Although he attempted to correct the situation, he shot up into the (top) of curve 16,” Romstad said. “The angle at which he did so resulted in him experiencing a G-force that literally collapsed his body, rendering it difficult to control the sled. Once this happened, he was literally at the mercy of the path of the sled. At the exit of curve 16 he hit the wall. This resulted in Nodar being catapulted onto the top of the wall, resulting in the fatal crash.”
Officials of VANOC and the luge federation insisted the track is extremely fast but not unsafe. Gayda said there have been 5,000 runs on the track without raising safety concerns, and that test events by international lugers, bobsledders and skeleton sliders went well.
“This is a fast sport, and athletes do encounter problems on a regular basis,” Romstad said. “There was nothing out of the ordinary that signaled there needed to be a change. It’s important to remember that this track has been operational for two years. If you look upon the overall, for lack of a better word, crash ratio, it is on par with other tracks.”
Luge speeds here have approached 95 mph, and officials of the luge federation said when future tracks are built, they do not want to see speeds in excess of 140 kilometers per hour (87 mph). They previously issued that statement after reports that the track being built for the 2014 Olympics at Sochi, Russia, would be even faster than this one.
