112 replies to this topic

[SoxScout]

Anyone here interested in skeleton or bobsled? The track at Whistler should be the site of some serious carnage this year.

Georgian luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili is en route to Whistler Hospital after a terrifying crash moments ago at Whistler Olympic Park.

Kumaritashvili was going close to 150 km/h, near the end of the course, when he launched off the track. Witnesses say his body hit a metal pole. CPR was performed almost immediately and an ambulance rushed Kumaritashvili from Whistler Olympic Park.

The Province's Terry Bell has been told that Kumaritashvili hit his head on a metal pole as he flew off the track. Medical personnel performed CPR through a plastic tube.

"It does not look good," says Bell.

http://www.timescolo...6532/story.html

Edited by SoxScout, 12 February 2010 - 03:22 PM.

[jcd0805]

http://www.timescolo...6532/story.html


Oh my God, the 1:00 mark.

He was DOA at Whistler Hospital

[JimD]

So, what happens now - do they postpone or even cancel any events?

[Chemistry Schmemistry]

So, what happens now - do they postpone or even cancel any events?

I think they have to postpone the luge, which starts tomorrow. Maybe there's something they can do to that turn to prevent sliders from leaving the track if they fuck up. But that can't be done in one day.

[Harry Hooper]

I think they have to postpone the luge, which starts tomorrow. Maybe there's something they can do to that turn to prevent sliders from leaving the track if they fuck up. But that can't be done in one day.

I remember the guy going head-first into the bridge overpass at St. Moritz years ago.

Looking at that video, it's hard to believe with that design that there was no netting in place in front of all those steel stanchions. That could be installed in an hour or so.

[mabrowndog]

Fucking IOC clamping down the copyright enforcement less than an hour after those vids were posted.

I hate laws.

[mpjc]

According to the NYTimes, concerns had already been raised about the speed of the course:

Training days in Whistler have been crash-filled. A Romanian woman was briefly knocked unconscious and at least four Americans — Chris Mazdzer on Wednesday, Megan Sweeney on Thursday and both Tony Benshoof and Bengt Walden on Friday in the same training session where Zoeggeler wrecked — have had serious trouble just getting down the track.

“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Hannah Campbell-Pegg of Australia 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.”

[Chemistry Schmemistry]

I remember the guy going head-first into the bridge overpass at St. Moritz years ago.

Looking at that video, it's hard to believe with that design that there was no netting in place in front of all those steel stanchions. That could be installed in an hour or so.

But slightly more off course, he might well have gone over the other side. Netting won't work at that speed, but maybe plexiglass? Since training is stopped for today, maybe a one-day postponement will be enough.

What's hard to believe is that he didn't die instantly.

[Dropkick Izzy]

Fucking IOC clamping down the copyright enforcement less than an hour after those vids were posted.

I hate laws.

Still up:

Are you shitting me with the poles lining the walls after that curve? I don't recall the luge courses from any previous games (why would I?), but that seems completely insane. Perhaps they could line the walls along that run with plexiglass?

Regardless, what an unfortunate way to start things off.

Edited by Dropkick Izzy, 12 February 2010 - 04:10 PM.

[barbed wire Bob]

Looking at that video, it's hard to believe with that design that there was no netting in place in front of all those steel stanchions. That could be installed in an hour or so.

Or sheets of plexiglass. I can't understand design either. To me it looks inherently dangerous with the low wall and the unpadded girders. I can only assume the designers underestimated the speeds that these guys would reach.

Edit: beaten to the punch by several other people.

Edited by barbed wire Bob, 12 February 2010 - 04:10 PM.

[Harry Hooper]

But slightly more off course, he might well have gone over the other side. Netting won't work at that speed, but maybe plexiglass? Since training is stopped for today, maybe a one-day postponement will be enough.

What's hard to believe is that he didn't die instantly.

Maybe, but there weren't any steel poles visible on the other side. The netting wouldn't stop you from leaving the track, but could absorb almost all of the momentum.


Edit: Saw it again. Yes, there are poles on both sides.

Edited by Harry Hooper, 12 February 2010 - 04:12 PM.

[mabrowndog]

Or sheets of plexiglass. I can't understand design either. To me it looks inherently dangerous with the low wall and the unpadded girders. I can only assume the designers underestimated the speeds that these guys would reach.

This is the same principle that led to the death of Princess Diana and her BF's driver. The car was hurtling through a tunnel at breakneck speeds and veered out of the lane and into a concrete support.
Building a luge run with a similar structure, and with a sharp curve leading into it, is beyond idiotic.

Plexiglas or Lexan might work, but for the athletes' vision and safety the panels would need to be treated to reduce or minimize any reflections or glare while still allowing spectators and TV cameras to view the action with clarity. That's not so easily achieved with the polymer base resins used (acrylic and polycarbonate, respectively).

EDIT - Thanks for the link, Izzy.

Edited by mabrowndog, 12 February 2010 - 04:19 PM.

[Harry Hooper]

Or sheets of plexiglass. I can't understand design either. To me it looks inherently dangerous with the low wall and the unpadded girders. I can only assume the designers underestimated the speeds that these guys would reach.

Was the design intended to maximize camera or spectator views near the finish of the run?

[barbed wire Bob]

This is the same principle that led to the death of Princess Diana and her BF's driver. The car was hurtling through a tunnel at breakneck speeds and veered out of the lane and into a concrete support.

Plexiglas or Lexan might work, but for the athletes' vision and safety the panels would need to be treated to reduce or minimize any reflections or glare while still allowing spectators and TV cameras to view the action with clarity. That's not so easily achieved with the polymer base resins used (acrylic and polycarbonate, respectively).

Please don't take this a snark but at this point the last thing I would worry about is the view for the spectators and tv cameras. The steel beams are only about 2 feet away from the track. Since you can't move them, and I don't think padding them would help much, the only way to make the track safer is to install some sort of barrier on top of the retaining wall.

Edited by barbed wire Bob, 12 February 2010 - 04:21 PM.

[barbed wire Bob]

Was the design intended to maximize camera or spectator views near the finish of the run?

Possibly, but the steel columns are spaced fairly close together, maybe 10 feet apart, and with the wall and roof, the views look pretty bad. The only good camera view appears to be looking up the track.

Edit: the link posted by Izzy is now down too. Those olympic PR people sure move fast

Edited by barbed wire Bob, 12 February 2010 - 04:28 PM.

[Chemistry Schmemistry]

From this photo, it looks like they already raised that wall a bit on both sides in anticipation of problems coming out of that turn.

I did see the video (now it's gone). At real-time speed, you can't even see the body leave the track. He hits that column so fast that all you see is the body lying on the ground as if it were teleported. It's more like a kid standing up in a roller coaster right before an underpass than anything else.

[mabrowndog]

Please don't take this a snark but at this point the last thing I would worry about is the view for the spectators and tv cameras. The steel beams are only about 2 feet away from the track. Since you can't move them, and I don't think padding them would help much, the only way to make the track safer is to install some sort of barrier on top of the retaining wall.

No snark taken. Just understand that without cameras and spectators there's no need to even hold the Olympics. So unless there's a fix that improves safety without inhibiting coverage they might as well just cancel the event. For the amount of money the networks pay for access rights, they're going to pretty much insist their own needs are part of any solution.

I don't mean to come across as more concerned about the networks/money/view than the athletes. That's just the plastics engineer in me talking.

Edited by mabrowndog, 12 February 2010 - 04:53 PM.

[Catcher Block]

For those who haven't/can't see the video, he loses control while transitioning out of the banked turn at the beginning of the straightaway (to the left of the his head in the photo.)

With all of him momentum coming off of the turn, he hits the beginning of the far-side straight wall and helicopters off the track and into the poles. Probably something I will only watch once.

[jkempa]

This track is really fast and really technical. That combination is uncommon. That happened at the fastest place in the sport in the world.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is necessary to keep the sun off of the track. I am not sure of the purpose of those posts but they do seem poorly placed Especially for that section.

Luge sleds are extremely sensitive. When I first learned skeleton, the aanalogy that we were given is that driving a luge is like driving a formula 1 race car while driving a skeleton sled is like driving a tractor. Even if you mess up driving a tractor, it's hard to move it too far out of the proper line. It takes
years to learn to drive a luge and some if these guys aren't that experienced. This poor man was only 21 and can't have had anywhere close to the number of runs that many others have had.

I was concerned for safety on luge (they also made last minute adjustments at Cesana in 2006 to try to protect the athletes) but didn't think anything like this would happen, expecting more stuff like concussions, etc. I've never been down the Whistler track, but decided a while ago that I was probably getting too old for that one anyways.

[slidingsideways]

Deadspin still has a video up here. There's also a series of pictures showing what happened as the poor guy's body left the track.


(Peter Parks, AFP/Getty)

Edited to switch photo to tinypic.

Edited by slidingsideways, 12 February 2010 - 05:14 PM.

[jkempa]

Just was able to see the picture more closely. The pole that he hit looks to be support for the roof of the track. On the left looks to be a lightpost. Edit: seeing these new pictures that is really poor design. I can't believe that those aren't at least heavily padded.

The drivers entering turn 16 will get some nasty oscillations. I haven't seen luge there yet but in skeleton people would come out of that turn too high and slam into the right wall. It was a guaranteed bang and I think that mist were ok taking it since it was towards the end of the track.

This is really tragic.

Edited by jkempa, 12 February 2010 - 05:21 PM.

[JimD]

Rightly or wrongly, the fact that the Canadians limited access to foreign athletes to these venues is not looking too good right now.

[barbed wire Bob]

Just was able to see the picture more closely. The pole that he hit looks to be support for the roof of the track. On the left looks to be a lightpost. Edit: seeing these new pictures that is really poor design. I can't believe that those aren't at least heavily padded.

The drivers entering turn 16 will get some nasty oscillations. I haven't seen luge there yet but in skeleton people would come out of that turn too high and slam into the right wall. It was a guaranteed bang and I think that mist were ok taking it since it was towards the end of the track.

This is really tragic.

It looks like the roof supports are a cantelever beam. If they put the roof supports on the inside of the turn instead of the outside then this probably wouldn't have happened since he would have been flying away from the roof columns. Also did you see speed in the screen shot Catcher posted? 144.3 km/h (89.7 mph for those of you not familiar with the metric system). I don't think padding would have helped. Very sad.

[Chemistry Schmemistry]

According to one story I read, he was by far the slowest of the competitors. Was fearful, had a bit of shakeup on an earlier run, and shouldn't have been out there. The screen shot also shows a time far behind the leader's finish time.

[jkempa]

It looks like the roof supports are a cantelever beam. If they put the roof supports on the inside of the turn instead of the outside then this probably wouldn't have happened since he would have been flying away from the roof columns. Also did you see speed in the screen shot Catcher posted? 144.3 km/h (89.7 mph for those of you not familiar with the metric system). I don't think padding would have helped. Very sad.

I'm guessing that the designers expected people to hit on the right wall (which after seeing the video he did do) and weren't expecting the athletes to go back across. The roof likely needed to be on that side to match the curve and protect from the sun, but there have been enought people down this track by this point to know how violent the hits out of that turn are that there should hav been padding at a minimum.

This was not how I wanted this thread to get filled up.

[TheYellowDart5]

According to one story I read, he was by far the slowest of the competitors. Was fearful, had a bit of shakeup on an earlier run, and shouldn't have been out there. The screen shot also shows a time far behind the leader's finish time.

Apparently, he'd already crashed a number of times before his fatal accident.

Not that this should downplay concerns about whether the track is safe (the gold medal favorite, Zoeggeler, wiped out earlier in the day), but this guy clearly wasn't up to snuff for this event or the track.

[jkempa]

According to one story I read, he was by far the slowest of the competitors. Was fearful, had a bit of shakeup on an earlier run, and shouldn't have been out there. The screen shot also shows a time far behind the leader's finish time.

Yeah top speeds are 10km/h faster. He clearly was not one of the best. The quota system for granting athletes entry to the olympics is admirable at it's core in order to get broader participation and interest (though you will definitely NOT be seeing all the best in the world there as a result) and I suspect that there may be pressure to change that going forward.

[Dropkick Izzy]

That sequence of pictures is awful.

[SilasCL]

But slightly more off course, he might well have gone over the other side. Netting won't work at that speed, but maybe plexiglass? Since training is stopped for today, maybe a one-day postponement will be enough.

What's hard to believe is that he didn't die instantly.

He probably did die instantly. When you give CPR the person has no pulse and isn't breathing, so they are already dead in a sense.

For an EMT or Paramedic to arrive on scene and not give CPR requires clear signs of death, which I hid because they can be a bit gross.

Things like decapitation, brain matter outside the skull, rigor mortis, blood pooling in the lower parts of the body, or decomposition.

If the responder didn't perform CPR just because the crash looked really bad, they could lose their license. It's typically up to the doctor to declare the person dead.

What a tragedy.

[Bongorific]

I've been on the bobsled track in Lake Placid before. What a terrible fucking design here. I understand it was a freak accident, but a layman could look at that last section of the track and see problems written all over it.

[mabrowndog]

On NBC Nightly News, they showed the run at full speed and then again in slow motion -- twice. It was quite graphic in high def.

The support he hit shields the camera from the point of impact, but it seems the back of his head struck it first. You can see a chunk of what appears to be his helmet fly off to the right. Even in slow mo, it shot off at a high velocity. The energy dissipated in that impact was incredible.

Edited by mabrowndog, 12 February 2010 - 07:07 PM.

[Bongorific]

On NBC Nightly News, they showed the run at full speed and then again in slow motion -- twice. It was quite graphic in high def.

The support he hit shields the camera from the point of impact, but it seems the back of his head struck it first. You can see a chunk of what appears to be his helmet fly off to the right. Even in slow mo, it shot off at a high velocity. The energy dissipated in that impact was incredible.

I saw it at 6:30 there for the first time too. A little surprised they showed it because even though there's no blood, it's very disturbing. You can tell he's screwed coming out of the turn, tries to brace himself flying off the sled, nips the top of the wall, rams head and back first into the support, and upon impact his body lays motionless and contorted. Really, really tragic.

[DukeSox]

On NBC Nightly News, they showed the run at full speed and then again in slow motion -- twice. It was quite graphic in high def.

The support he hit shields the camera from the point of impact, but it seems the back of his head struck it first. You can see a chunk of what appears to be his helmet fly off to the right. Even in slow mo, it shot off at a high velocity. The energy dissipated in that impact was incredible.

I can't believe they still have the video up on their website. They are essentially showing a person die, on video. An accident, but really no different than watching someone get hit in the head by a baseball bat and dying instantly. I guess they can fall back on the "died on the way to the hospital." Looked dead to me as soon as he stopped moving. Weird.

[amh03]

I saw it on the news too - first CBS and they didn't give any warning...very jarring. At least NBC prefaced with a warning on the graphic nature of it. Very disturbing...I don't see the need to air it at all...never mind re-airing it and in slow motion.

[mabrowndog]

They showed it again, leading off the national coverage at 7:30.

[twoBshorty]

They showed it again, leading off the national coverage at 7:30.

We turned it on expecting to see the pomp and circumstance of the Opening Ceremony and instead this was the first thing mentioned. At least they gave warning so we could change the channel and avoid seeing it.

Not a good omen.

[ColoradoJack]

They showed it again, leading off the national coverage at 7:30.

i just saw it....absolutely brutal. those poles should be (and should have been) wrapped like goalposts or at least like the pads you see around chairlift riblets.

really fuck'n stupid.

[mabrowndog]

i just saw it....absolutely brutal. those poles should be (and should have been) wrapped like goalposts or at least like the pads you see around chairlift riblets.

really fuck'n stupid.

At the speed he was going, I'm not sure padding would have made much of a difference. Ideally, an out-of-control athlete's entire body must be contained within the track.

It's really disgraceful this wasn't addressed before now. And this isn't Monday-morning quarterbacking. Not only did numerous athletes voice concerns, but any student of elementary physics can discern how coming out of that turn could seriously disrupt a luger's stability, causing him/her to rock back and forth in that half-pipe and be ejected from the track on either side.

[jayhoz]

Really disturbing video. It pretty much has ruined the night for my wife and I. Just terrible.

I agree that padding wouldn't have dissipated the energy enough in a direct impact like that. They may have been able to use padding to change the shape of the supports to deflect the luger some. Maybe that would have saved his life?

[johnmd20]

They showed it again, leading off the national coverage at 7:30.

They showed it twice. I'm shocked they showed it. Very scary to watch when you think of the last 1 second of that guy's life when he flew out of the track and into a metal pole. Awful.

[Harry Hooper]

I can't believe they still have the video up on their website. They are essentially showing a person die, on video. An accident, but really no different than watching someone get hit in the head by a baseball bat and dying instantly. I guess they can fall back on the "died on the way to the hospital." Looked dead to me as soon as he stopped moving. Weird.

Yeah, it's a genuine snuff film complete with sound and pieces of his helmet and face shield flying off to the left and right. NBC really shouldn't be running that.

[mabrowndog]

At that speed, if he'd struck the beam longitudinally across an extended leg or arm, if probably would have been severed in grotesque fashion. Hell, if his body had been rotated clockwise 90 degrees where only his head struck it but no other part of his body made impact, we'd have likely seen a decapitation. Padding or no padding.

Those are hideous thoughts, but there are so many horrific injuries that could occur depending on an athlete's body orientation that there's no way to design a padding system to effectively prevent or mitigate all cases. In most instances, the blunt trauma would still be severe. That's why a retention system or barrier is really the only viable option.

I wonder what legal avenues his family will have to navigate in their attempts to recover damages from the IOC, COC and/or VANOC over this apparent negligence? I suspect we'll be hearing about the convoluted court maneuverings for years to come.

Edited by mabrowndog, 12 February 2010 - 08:39 PM.

[PayrodsFirstClutchHit]

Is this some kind of rollerball arena?

Why is there not a plexiglass wall or something that would just allow someone to slide down the track after an accident?

What a horrible design.

[barbed wire Bob]

The NBC affiliate in LA is reporting that the IOC may cancel the luge competition.

[jkempa]

The NBC affiliate in LA is reporting that the IOC may cancel the luge competition.

I hope that they don't do that for the sake of the athletes. I'd rather see them move the luge competition to Calgary.

[bsj]

Why not put plexiglass up 8-10 feet along that entire stretch?

[kopeck]

Why not put plexiglass up 8-10 feet along that entire stretch?

This seems like a no brainer.

No amount of padding would have saved him but if they keep him out of the beams he might have had a chance.

I'm also surprised they showed the footage.

[Fred not Lynn]

I hope that they don't do that for the sake of the athletes. I'd rather see them move the luge competition to Calgary.

I'm afraid the logistics would be simply unworkable...at least within this two-week period.

[William Robertson]

If you watch the video of the full run it looks like there are dangerous walls, edges, and poles at virtually every spot on the run. Making it anything resembling "safe" would be a huge labor.

I know nothing about luge, but I'm not sure you need to to see the problem.

The snowboarders look dangerous, too, to my untrained observation.

[jkempa]

No they definitely could do it in Calgary. There have been replacement world cup events in bobsled and skeleton on very short notice. The track remains open well into the year. The athletes and jury can get there in a few hours and have three days of training on that track before the end of the Olympics. The jury is only there for luge. The only difficulty is in televising. I think if you asked the athletes whether they'd rather compete in Calgary Without tv or not at all, the answer would be Calgary.

I would be really surprised if they cancelled the competitions. It is simply not fair to athletes that have worked very hard for this opportunity.

I am not sure whether they will keep the luge race at whistler, but I fully expect three luge races to occur