You make it sound like that is a bad thing.IOC out in full force on youtube
Fcuknig horrible...........
MacLeans.ca has this posted on their site:
Death on luge track leads to questions about course, Canadian competitiveness
Athletes find the course ‘exceedingly dangerous’ and feel like lemmings thrown down a track
A collective cry went out at the Main Media Centre this morning when video featuring the horrific crash of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili was broadcast into the hall. The 21-year-old racer died at the Whistler Sliding Centre — following his second crash in just two days.
Ominously, even before the accident, questions about the “exceedingly dangerous,” 1,450-m-long course — the fastest on earth — were being raised. The top speed reached at the track at Fitzsimmon’s Creek, on Blackcomb Mountain is 153.93 km/h. Kumaritashvili was believed to have been travelling at 144.3 km/h.
The track was built by Stantec Architecture Limited, who designed the Salt Lake City bobsleigh, luge and skeleton track in Utah; construction began in 2005 and wrapped up in 2007, when safety testing was begun.The international luge and bobsleigh federations both signed off on the track’s design and safety. But in training runs Thursday, both Guntis Rekis of Latvia and Stefan Hoehner of Germany had high-speed crashes. “My goals are to stay alive, not break bones and catch some good Whistler feeling,” Rekis told reporters. “I was scared a bit.”
“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg said Thursday night after she nearly lost control in training. “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.”“I’ve never slid that fast,” Maya Pedersen told Maclean’s at a World Cup event in February. “It’s a very difficult track,” said the 36-year-old, who won women’s skeleton gold for Switzerland at the 2006 Games.
Canada may not only face criticism about the safety of the track. Questions will likely also be raised about Canada’s aggressive pursuit of the home ice advantage in Vancouver and Whistler.
Earlier this week, Andy Schmid, the performance director of British Skeleton called the Canadian decision to limit practice time for overseas competitors (compared to the more than 300 runs set aside for Canadian athletes) as irresponsible. “Please, let there be no accidents there because that could kill the sport,” he told Britain’s Telegraph.
“People have the argument that it’s just home advantage and that’s normal for an Olympic host country, but it’s different for sports involving high speed. Can you imagine in Formula One nobody being allowed on a track because somebody has home advantage?”
Kumaritashvili’s death marks a terrible start to the Vancouver Olympics. No one yet knows how the crash will affect tonight’s Opening Ceremonies at BC Place, or the luge event, set to begin Saturday, with the men’s singles. Luge training at Whistler has been suspended.