The much-anticipated opening ceremony held last night in Vancouver was overshadowed by news of the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian luger who died during a practice run. Olympics’ organizers were quick to implement changes to the track to make it safer for the competitors; there’s hope that the games will go on as planned without accident or incident. But there’s now no viable way that the Olympics will recover from the simple fact that someone died there.
You can’t help but wonder who’s at fault for the luger’s death. It’s hard to not place responsibility on the International Olympic Committee who, amid concerns, made the track so fast and dangerous that someone could lose total control. Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports knows who’s to blame:
While a coroner will state the official cause of death as injuries suffered in a gruesome luge crash at the Whistler Sliding Centre on Friday morning, the reality is far sadder: Those who allowed the sport’s tracks to evolve from navigable challenges into insane kamikaze runs committed negligent homicide on a 21-year-old from the Republic of Georgia.
Maybe it’s time for us to reconsider these events altogether, as we’ve lost sight of the dangers involved, says Mike Lopresti in USA Today.
It should be pointed out that the Winter Olympics involve people skiing hell-bent down mountains and hurling themselves off ski jump ramps and hurtling at breakneck speed down a track of hard ice. And we’re shocked someone might get seriously hurt?
Or maybe these athletes are willfully putting their lives at risk every time they go out there, worries Jay Mariotti at AOL’s FanHouse.
So there were the racers Saturday, resuming their craft even if it required sliding eerily into the same final turns where their colleague had perished. According to Fendt, not one luger expressed a desire to cancel the two-day event. You can call it steely dedication to one’s passion. I call it insanity.
No matter who you fault for Kumaritashvili’s death – organizers, supporters, or the athletes themselves – there’s no way that the dark cloud that’s positioned itself above the games will dissipiate any time soon. There are other worries about snow, weather, injuries, cheating, and more as competitions get under way. Yet through it all sits one scandal that rises above the rest as what will ultimately defined a failed Olympics season. Precautions should have been made to prevent this terrible tragedy.
There’s bound to be massive amounts of attention focused on the luging competitions now. It’ll be warranted. What’s left to be seen, though, is how the Olympics will deal with the reality that all those years of organizing, planning, and staging have been complicated by something drastically unexpected, yet entirely inexcusable. Let’s see what sort of games we have once all the snow settles.
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I don’t think the luger’s death will have any impact on this year’s Winter Olympics.
Give me a break. Baseball had a guy die in the early 1900′s due to being beaned in the head by a fastball. Basketball had Reggie Lewis die of heart complications while playing on the court. Football used to have deaths be a common incident before they started wearing helmets and then real helmets later. Hockey has had goalies’ throats slashed by other players skates in mid-action. Boxing has had plenty of their performers die in the ring. Stuff happens. Those sports have all gone on. None of them have stopped because of such incidents. Before this incident happened, nobody ever heard of this stuff happening at the Olympics. Obviously, it’s not all that common from what it seems (at least when it comes to lugering or whatever you call it). Don’t tell me that the Olympic organization should’ve taken the proper precautions. Everything’s 20/20 in hindsight.
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And please don’t quote that dick of a sportswriter, Jay Mariotti. That guy just says stuff to get people’s blood moving. That’s all he’s there for. He probably doesn’t even take himself seriously. All he is is a shmuck who likes to be controversial in order to get some attention. The dude pissed off most of the people in Chicago who would read the Sun-Times and I can clearly see that he hasn’t stopped from where he left off with that newspaper. He’s still the same old moron who just writes stuff just to be controversial and not to make any valid points.
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He says “You can call it steely dedication to one’s passion. I call it insanity.” What an absolute jack—. Because one person dies in an incident, the sport shouldn’t be played anymore at this current time? Oh, please. As I said before, deaths haven’t stopped any other sports from being played. According to Mariotti’s logic, we shouldn’t have any sports due to the infinitesimal chance of dying in them. Too stupid for words.
Although I wouldn’t go as far as Yisroel did on Mariotti’s comments, those were the ones that I found most odd.
So Mariotti won’t go luging down a track at 90 mph anymore . . . ok, but every luger at the Olympics will continue to do so.
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Additionally, I haven’t really felt the presence looming over the Olympics as much as one might expect.