good lord those original nations folks…hope they had oxygen tanks nearby, they danced the full 45 minutes or so….zoinks! BTW, I actually saw the footage w/audio of that poor luge dude crashing and to say it's disturbing would be like saying the World Series earthquake was a minor ground disturbance…The imagery is obscured, mercifully, but the sound of the impact will haunt me for some time. Why wouldn't you put some type of thick padding or collapsible impact plastic (like a freeway off ramp)on a steel girder? I realize at the speed he was travelling (80-90mph) wearing only a helmet, padding wouldn't have done too much to save him, but c'mon anything is better then exposed steel? What about netting? He was airborne for a spell before impact. Think it was a major engineering/design flaw. It never ceases to amaze me when people spend all that money to design a new athletic facility and don't even consult w/the actual athletes or fans for ideas or opinions to improve the concept while in the design phase.

good lord those original nations folks…hope they had oxygen tanks nearby, they danced the full 45 minutes or so….zoinks! BTW, I actually saw the footage w/audio of that poor luge dude crashing and to say it's disturbing would be like saying the World Series earthquake was a minor ground disturbance…The imagery is obscured, mercifully, but the sound of the impact will haunt me for some time. Why wouldn't you put some type of thick padding or collapsible impact plastic (like a freeway off ramp)on a steel girder? I realize at the speed he was travelling (80-90mph) wearing only a helmet, padding wouldn't have done too much to save him, but c'mon anything is better then exposed steel? What about netting? He was airborne for a spell before impact. Think it was a major engineering/design flaw. It never ceases to amaze me when people spend all that money to design a new athletic facility and don't even consult w/the actual athletes or fans for ideas or opinions to improve the concept while in the design phase.

what is disturbing me, monk, is that on many of the message boards people are blaming the victim instead of questioning the rationale of them building a track that is uber dangerous. also, no one but the canadian athletes were allowed to train on it until the past couple of days. there have been many, many crashes at the same curve during practices.

of course the committee has found no wrong doing in the design; what else is new?

I really enjoyed the screechers. The fiddle and violin playing was amazing!

Loved the tap dancers.

They rocked!

His death was so senseless, tragic and sad. I can't believe they kept showing it.

I was looking at the whistler sliding centre on wiki, I think they knew also. On Dec 9 2008, there was a press release wanting a crash barrier.

Now, they decide to raise the wall make an unspecified change in the ice profile. What???

The track was tested by the best of the best in 2008 and the 2009 World Cup was held there.

But what about the countries who go into sliding in the Olympics never expecting to win and their practice runs are the first experience with this track.

I think the Olympics are very different than the world Cup, in this respect.

Nodar was ranked 44, I think. How sad, his dad is president of the luge foundation in Georgia, and his cousin is the team captain.

I watched some interviews, seems to be the same opinion of the sliders, fastest track in the world and any loss of concentration can get you in trouble because it's technical as well. You have a 50, 50 chance.

Wow, I realize this sport is about speed, but how much speed can the human body take. A crash at speeds of 90 plus is real death risk.

When does fast just become too fast. There were a few other crashes in practice runs.

What if a foreign object is just on the track.

NBC had a group of "experts" talking about the track and one of them said that they weren't concerned w/the ranked top 15 competitiors, but it was the others from 16 on down they were frightened for. It's also been revealed lately that the IOC had been warned to "SLOW DOWN THE TRACK" because it was ridiculously fast and unsafe. Because nothing says Olympic Spirit of Athletic camarderie quite like endangering the less experienced countries' athletes….Tool of the week award presented to the IOC and the engineers that didn't bother to think of the athletes's safety.