Motor City Sports

The Winter Olympics don’t even start for another six hours, and things are already going wrong. The weather is causing major problems for the alpine skiing events – both downhill training runs had to be canceled today – and even though that’s good news for Lindsey Vonn’s healing shin, they do eventually need to run the races.

The bigger issue, though, appears to be the sliding course. One day after a female member of the Romanian team was knocked unconscious in a wreck, Georgian Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed today when he crashed, came off his sled, flew off the track and hit a pole. Even before Kumaritashvili’s death was announced, there were meetings underway to discuss the safety of the track. Lugers have exceeded 95 mph on the course – the fastest ever built – and there have been several high-speed wrecks in training.

I’m not sure what they can do at this point. They could start the men’s race from the lower starting point being used for the women and doubles, but that’s only going to help a bit – the women have been crashing, too. It would be terribly unfair for the competitors to cancel the events, but it also isn’t fair to ask them to put their lives at more risk than usual.

Also, this story doesn’t end with the luge events. The skeleton and bobsleigh competitions use the same track.