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,? Australia?s Hannah Campbell-Pegg 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.?

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/353691...lympic_sports/

That sucks, maybe he'll try harder next time

Wow, that is just nuts - it really looks like a bad design in the track cos he was simply flung from the large curved corner to the shallow wall and, hup, out of the track.

The luge and skeleton are the two most craziest events at the WO

The Whistler Sliding Centre track was designed by Udo Gurgel of IBG Designs in Germany.

http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic...e_62938jB.html

All of that to be .001 second faster than some other guy. They basically all cross the finish line at the same time.

It looks like he might have made if landed in a different spot, but it can never be good to eat it at 90 mph.

shit i haven't gone sledding in such a long time ...OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS! ...weeeeee

He died, but I'm sure you saw that and were cracking a joke. Another fake nick making off-color comments, just what GFY needed.

removed again

wow that is horrible :Oh crap

I got tickets for the women's luge run. Taking my 12 year old nephew and don't want to scar him for life witnessing something like that. RIP.

Actually, he was going SLOWER than the russian guy who was about 1.5 seconds faster. It wasn't like he was going at an incredible beyond the track could take speed, he simply fucked up.

From the video, he was clearly off kilter/messed up in the corner, you can see his hand out. They say the prior 2 corners are the fastest, and he would have had to be way off balance to wreck there since it's a relatively slower corner.. actually slightly inclined upwards to help slow them for the end.

In any case, there is utterly no excuse for not putting big pads on every one of those poles right now. Should have been there anyway..

RIP

Very sad to see

At least he went out doing what he loved. It looks like he died instantly.

RIP

Yeah, I think ~90mph into a steel pole would probably do it. :(

they could have done anything.. for the amount of money spent, you think this would be the priority

Padding's not going to do much when you're flying at 90 mph in spandex.

After watching the video a few times, I'm wondering why they aren't using sponge mats along the poles, kinda make a wall of it? People can't see? I think keeping them safe at this point is more important.

RIP

:2 cents:

the WO are dangerous. Downhill skiing anyone? We have seem some pretty sick crashes in the past. Part of the draw to the Luge is the insane speed and guts that it takes to do that event. You cant pad the entire track. As someone stated... padding up a steel pole wouldnt have made much of a diff going 90mph back first into it. Its still a steel pole

Why This Track Means Fear

This story originally appeared in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, February 6, 2010.

What we have here is a veritable Citius Altius Fortius checkmate.

Canada will make its stand against the German medal machine in bobsleigh, luge and skeleton on a track that's hit the outer limits of sliding sports.

Early in the planning for the 2014 Sochi Games, the Russian hosts were told flatly by the sport's governing bodies: those speeds at the Whistler Sliding Centre? Don't even dream of trying to match them.

Think about that: how many sports have essentially stood up and said: Enough!

The sport has screamed Uncle, Onkel and Dyadya.

"In 30 years, who knows?" said Canadian luger Jeff Christie, a Vancouver native who represents the athletes. "But I know that the FIL [the governing body] has told tracks that in the future, 135ish [kilometres an hour] is about it."

But that won't be 'it' in Whistler.

The two fastest speeds in World Cup luge and bobsleigh history were recorded here last season. German luger Felix Loch hit 153.937 km/h. Janis Minins of Latvia became the first four-man bobsleigh driver to reach 153 km/h - more than five km/h better than the fastest time posted on the World Cup this year, on the natural ice surface at St. Moritz, a track with fewer perils than Whistler's.

Whistler's reputation was established in November, 2008 when Loch damaged shoulder tendons in a crash and was one of three lugers hospitalized, and Canadian bob driver Pierre Lueders crashed in Corner 7, which was instantly named Lueders' Loop.

Holcomb has since claimed that the course was designed backward, with tighter turns near the bottom where sleds max-out the speed. And American luger Tony Benshoof told NBC: "When I first got on this track, I thought that somebody was going to kill themselves."

Turn 13 banks sharply to the left and sends the sleds into a horseshoe-shaped curve that slings them to the finish line. Two-time overall World Cup bobsleigh champion Steve Holcomb nicknamed it "50/50" after half the sleds crashed during the World Cup training run. Some track modifications since then will give the drivers a little more leeway going into it during the Olympics.

"There is a human limit," says Canadian luge coach and former German doubles medalist Wolfgang Staudinger. "I hope we don't increase the speed of our tracks. Whistler is on the limit."

"You never say never," says Terry Gudzowsky, the former Canadian bobsledder who heads the FIBT's track commission and who consulted on Whistler and Sochi track designs. "Speed isn't the issue. At St. Moritz ... there's not a lot of G-forces there."

The Whistler Sliding Centre is designed to a maximum G-force of 5.02, and sleds will typically pull 2.5 or 3.0 Gs. By comparison, a Formula 1 car might hit three to four Gs when braking, and a top fuel dragster going from 0 to 160 km/h in 0.8 seconds creates a G-force of 5.0.

"The difference in Whistler is you're going 150 through [turns] 12, 13, 14," said Gudzowsky, who is an on-track official. "There's a chicane with a lot of pressure and in 15 ... that's where speed becomes an issue. In future the intent will be to stay away from combining high speed and high G-forces. Sochi will be like Whistler in that both are relatively narrow and steep but ... there will be three uphill sections to control the speed. It will be quick. It will be technical. But we will be doing 150 here. We'll be in the 130s in Sochi."

Robert Storey, the Ottawa-based president of the FIBT, was part of a 1966 crash in Lake Placid where teammate Sergio Zardini died.

"All new tracks are set out as huge bogeymen and, generally, there's a reaction to new tracks from the most reactionary of people - usually coaches," Storey said. "A track changes over time ...everybody adapts."

Christie noticed a difference in the track in December. World Cup overall skeleton champion Mellisa Hollingsworth of Eckville, Alta., freely admits the track unnerves her, saying it "seems to change every time we come to train. There's a fine line to make it slideable for all three sports."

"Ice-wise, it's the best it's been," said Christie, who was arrived in Whistler on Thursday. "It's important that people remember that a track is a living, breathing thing. What I've learned about this track is you need to back off on the driving a bit. You need to react to what's happening instead of what you think will happen."

Unreal. Hopefully that's the only death :(

That's pretty insane.

I'm curious why the poles need to be so close to the track? Why not build the structure with run outs , maybe line the outer track with those big sheer nets they use for other shit like golf courses and whatnot?

I'm sure they will learn something from this, even if it is just to keep the speeds down for track design. But if they really want to keep pushing the sport, and there will be those who do, they need to adjust to new dangers and look at something like this in future designs.

Very tragic. :(

A very fast track, and very poor safety consideration put into the design.

I didn't see it earlier today, so I went looking for video of the event. This was the best I could find.

http://www.totalprosports.com/2010/0...lympics-video/

Very, very sad. RIP.

You'll probably get a lot more for your tickets now. Look at car racing. The only reason it is so popular is because half the people there are hoping to see a serious car accident.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/afp/dv_t....rp350x350.jpg

Jesus! Who designed this course, Helen Keller?
They may as well have put metal spikes on the sides. damn

There are a lot of saftey measures that could be taken in every sport. At the end of the day these guys are Olympians and they shouldn't need training wheels. This just came down to inexpirence. It was a fluke event and unlikely to happen again for decades.

Although I am sure they probably will put up a barrier of some sort at that spot for piece of mind.

Padding wouldn't have saved him :2 cents:

Not at those speeds.

They need nets.

Whoever designed this death track should be fired.

Should have had big sheets of plexiglass

Come on guys, putting padding on the posts wouldn't have done shit at 144kph. The area near the corner should have been fenced in somehow for safety, not 'padded'

That sucks!

it happens

Sorry, retards. You can't put a childproof cap on a luge track. It's always going to be dangerous. That's why the olympics are setup for the highest caliber athletes. He fucked the turn up, he paid the price. That corner isn't killing everyone.

I don't want to seem cold, but enough with the reactionary "hit-a-nerve" responses. Think this shit through, people. It's luge. it's 140km/hr on a rock hard ice-track. What the fuck do you expect from a crash?

We should pad the track, and the edges, and the runners of the luge, and the athlete. As a matter of fact, lets pad the entryway onto the track, and the road up to the venue. Or, we could just grow a fucking pair.

Exactly. Padding is a joke, and netting would rip you to shreds. Sliding wont kill you or even hurt you - it's the sudden impact that creates injury. Unless you are skiing and your skiis wont come off and the torque from the leverage of the ski will cause the injury.

Skiing was my life for 12 years. I competed in the "King Of The Hill" mogul series in Tahoe, I've jumped off 75+ foot cliffs. And I was clocked at more than 100MPH. Falling at half that speed sucked real bad, but it's cool until you hit a fuckin tree, a person, a rock or lift pole all of which I've witnessed. But this is sport, the risk is what makes it so exhilirating... the fear of injury or death is the fun that makes us feel alive and powerfull.

Rest In Peace man - you died with honor.

u win some and you luge some

Spoke with someone tonight, there have already been twelve incidents during luge training on this track. There comes a point when fast is to fast and I think they have found it.

I will be surprised if they don't delay the luge event, do something major to slow this down a bit and rethink safety barrier because of this. It's the first time since 1948(i think) that a luger has been killed at the olympics, and that wasn't in training like this was. Its just to damn fast.

racing will continue tomorrow on it..

they're raising the walls at the exit of the curve he crashed on and shaving down the ice, altering the sliding lines

hopefully nothing else goes wrong

Ever see one of those high-flying ski jumpers come down all wrong? ker splat city, often times.

Should we pad the ice in case a figure skater gets dropped on her head?

Unfortunate, but shit happens. Lugers more than anyone know full well the risks of their sport. All you can say is RIP to the unfortunate athlete.


Btw, a long-time friend of mine from Alberta just found out not too long ago that she has a half-sister who lives in Calgary. All her life she thought she was an only child, it was quite a surprise. What does this have to do with the luge? Well... her newly discovered half sister has a daughter, and that daugher just happens to be on the Canadian luge team, her name is Meaghan Simister. Meaghan will be flying down that very track in the next few days or a week. Hoping she does well but I'm now a little worried.