Death at the 2010 Winter Olympics
We live on Vancouver Island, an hour-and-a-half by ferry from the BC mainland, and when we tuned into the opening of Canada’s Olympics in Vancouver, yesterday, we had a hard time figuring out which was advertising, which was promo and which was actual.
There was a long, long hype item item showing Canadians skiing, skating, sledding with Olympic rings swirling around them, adverts, talking heads, and so forth.
So we gave up and switched to a news channel just as a video clip of Georgian Luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili on a practice run had begun playing.
Tragically, travelling at more than 144 kilometres an hour, he lost control of his sled and was thrown violently into a steel pole like the one in the picture on the edge of the track.
The clip is from a photo on All Voices. It was taken as Kumaritashvili was being rushed off the track by ambulance.
“He was going around a turn known as 50/50 as you stood a 50% chance of making it”, says James Joiner on All Voices, going on, “The remainder of the Georgian Olympic team will compete in his honor but the mood has been set.
“So far 12 accidents and that particular turn is known as 50/50. I just watched the footage of the crash, damn! I refuse to believe those braces are like solid steel and right above the run.”
Kumaritashvili’s death threw a pall over the 2010 Winter Olympics even before they began.
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