04/25/24
February 07, 2011
Vancouver Olympic Committee discussed luge track safety issues well before tragedy.:
Eleven months before Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed on a practice run at the 2010 Games, officials with the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee discussed the possibility of an athlete getting "badly injured or worse."
Does this make him criminally liable in Canada?
posted by Joey Michaels at 05:23 PM on February 07, 2011
While in no way do I want to say that VANOC should be let off the hook, but I do think that a line that is buried in the story and probably plays a large part in the fact that the changes were not made was the fact that other users of the track were opposed to the changes
The documents also show that the other users of the Whistler track, the international bobsleigh and tobogganing federation (FIBT), opposed FIL's proposed changes.
posted by Demophon at 08:59 AM on February 08, 2011
One thing that has always bothered me was what they did to make the track safer after the death of Kumaritashvili.
From the photos I saw, they constructed a framed wall, clad with some sort of sheet material on the track facing side to fill in the area that had previously had just the exposed steel posts which proved so deadly.
Not only did the job look like a weekend warrior did it, if that might have been all they needed to do to make that part of the track safer and it didn't take them long to figure out how to do it, why the hell didn't they do it to begin with? Spend that monetarily insignificant thousand or two before somebody dies?
posted by beaverboard at 10:39 AM on February 08, 2011
That's a pretty damning lie for Furlong to be caught in. It's a disgrace that I hope will result in significant litigation against the organizers. It would also be nice to see him stripped of his Order of Canada honor.
posted by rcade at 11:00 AM on February 08, 2011
But VANOC CEO John Furlong had a very different take on the FIL letter.
"[E]mbedded in this note (cryptic as it may be) is a warning that the track is in their view too fast and someone could get badly hurt. An athlete gets badly injured or worse and I think the case could be made we were warned and did nothing."
Furlong's email is in stark contrast to his public comments about how little concerned VANOC was about the possibility of a bad accident on the luge track.
That's going to leave a (bigger) stain on his legacy.