Luge Claims Another Life

According to to various press sources, Nodar Kumaritashvili of Republic of Georgia was killed in a training accident today when his toboggan luge-y sleddish thing flew the f*ck off the end of the track at about 90 miles an hour, carrying him into an unpadded metal pole that seems to have been placed optimally for that task. He was declared dead at the scene. Kumaritashvili was 21 years old.

Here’s how well-respected, big-gun media has covered it:

USA Today “Luger’s Death Casts Somber Tone . . .”
Vancouver Sun “Georgia’s Minister of sport pleads for a full investigation after luger’s death . . .”
and, with HD video, of course, from NBC Sports, “Olympic luger dies . . .”

I’m not going to make this a rant on the internet, media or anything else. You can figure that out yourself and if you can’t, then enjoy replaying the video in slo-mo over and over again.

Now, I snowboard. I have hurt myself seriously enough – at 15 miles per hour. This guy was screaming along at 144 km/h – about 90! As a friend who once wrote about her experience as an amateur luge-r said, “It’ll scare the f*cking sh*t out of you and I was only going about 30.” So, what kind of idiot was Nodar?

Not the point, again. I want to know this – why on god’s green earth did the brilliant architects designing the $100 million sliding track at Whistler save a little green to PAD THE FRAKING POLES on a track where people could indeed go hurtling through space OR construct mesh or acrylic shields or any other of a mess of safety stuffs that could absolutely have improved this poor guy’s chances and reduced the risk of sudden, skull-cracking consequences whilst boring full-speed down an icy half-tube?

Just doesn’t make sense. Morons. Geez.