2010 Winter Olympics Vancouver

There is still a track in Calgary and you can pay to try it out. The Canadian team trains there amongst other places.

 

They still have a track in Calgary, it is used regularly and hosts a world cup competition every year. The Canadian team, though, has been training at the Whistler site, same with the bobsledders and skeleton competitors as well.

What does this have to do with anything?

 

I was wondering if they could move the entire event to Calgary, or wherever the Canadian team had been practicing (if it wasn't Calgary or the Olympic track).

/only if the lugers got together and said they wouldn't run the Whistler site

 

I was wondering where you were going with it. I don't think Calgary would mind, would certainly be a controversial move, especially after the money spent. I think the best thing they could do is delay the events at the track and make it safer with some sort of netting or set up to prevent further incidents. End of the day it is a dangerous event and the athletes are more than aware of what the risks are, much in the same way the down hill skiers are aware that they can be seriously hurt or killed if the lose control on a run.

 

This is not the first time a fatal luge accident has taken place in the Olympics and probably won't be the last. These people know what they're getting into.

They probably ought to put some plexiglas in that chute (a lot of people have crashed at Whistler - this was about where he crashed), but I can't see them doing it because of what it may do to the TV angles.

 

Look at the whole sequence: http://www.repubblica.it/speciali/olimpiadi/vancouver/2010/02/12/foto/morte_slittino_kumaritashvili-2275947/1/#http://www.repubblica.it/images/2010/02/12/221041844-8bbe911c-c4a3-401f-a0d9-e9530cac177c.jpg

NOTE: Third photo from the end is not for the squeamish.

 

Maybe, but this isn't the first incident. They had to airlift someone out after they crashed a few days ago. It would not surprise me if the lugers refused to take part. That appears to be a horribly flawed track.

 

MSNBC is broadcasting that game.

 

The problem is the speed, not the lack of netting or padding. These tracks are designed to keep the participants within the track, similar to the way a seatbelt keeps you in the car. If you look at the photos those sidewalls coming out of corner 13 are fairly high - just not high enough in this case. You don't go as fast, you don't pop out that high. This track is far faster than any other in Olympic history and I'm guessing the sidewalls are merely equivalent to other tracks, not higher.

The other luge death - there's only been one - was at the first time the sport was in the Olympics, and led to the innovation of many engineering changes to improve safety. Expect the same to happen here.

 

Yahoo's Dan Wetzel weighs in, calling for the luge to shut down unless the track is fixed to slow things down:

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=dw-lugedeath021210&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

 

Isn't the women's start further down the run than the men's? That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?

 

From Wikipedia entry on the Whistler sledding track: "It was designed by Laurenz Kosichek of Stantec Architecture Limited, a generalist architect who had never seen a bobsleigh race and was quoted as saying, 'I knew as much about bobsled, luge, as probably any average person does...which was next to nothing.'"