International Luge Federation calls for improved safety after athlete’s tragic death

VANCOUVER - Josef Fendt, the president of the International Luge Federation, has called for incorporating appropriate safety measures for Luge riders after one of them died in a high-speed crash ahead of Friday night’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony.

Fendt said that he was one of many concerned about the track’s safety after an international training week there in November 2008.

After seeing record speeds and a number of spills by skilled riders, he wondered if it was too fast.

“It makes me worried,” The New York Times quoted him, as saying.

Fendt’s caution came after Luge rider Nodar Kumaritashvili of the Republic of Georgia, lost control of his luge sled near the end of his training run while traveling nearly 90 miles an hour and was killed.

The sled, with Kumaritashvili riding atop on his back, feet first, bounced off a side wall and threw Kumaritashvili over the short, ice-covered concrete wall on the left. He slammed into vertical supports that hold a canopy and lights over the course. Medics arrived immediately, but Kumaritashvili was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Kumaritashvili, from Borjomi, Georgia, was 21.

Hours after the accident, Georgia’s Olympic delegation wore black armbands as they marched in the opening ceremony.

On Friday, Fendt said in a statement, “This is the gravest thing that can happen in sport, and our thoughts and those of the ‘luge family’ are naturally with those touched by this event.”

When asked if future Winter Olympics should have a luge track that is not as challenging as the one here, Rogge said: “It’s not a time to look for reasons. That will come in due time.”

The accident will raise questions not only about the safety of the track but also about the International Olympic Committee’s shift in recent years toward increasingly dangerous sports.

It has added events like skier cross and snowboarding that feature high drama driven by danger. Although luge is not new to the Games, technology and track design have rapidly pushed speeds higher.

Canadian sports officials will face criticism for providing foreign athletes with relatively little access to most Olympic venues in an effort to give Canadians a competitive advantage for the Games.

While Vancouver Organizing Committee officials followed the guidelines established by sports federations for allowing access, they did not follow tradition. Many foreign athletes and federations were peeved over the relatively little training time on venues, from the ski courses to the speedskating oval and the sliding center.

Kumaritashvili, ranked 44th in World Cup standings this season, did not participate in a World Cup event at Whistler last year. He made nine runs down the track at an international training week in November.

His crash at Whistler occurred on his fifth training run of the week. He crashed higher on the course during his second run on Wednesday.

Two-time defending gold medalist Armin Zoeggeler of Italy was among many athletes who have crashed in training this week.

Kumaritashvili is thought to be the first Olympic athlete killed during training or competition since the 1964 Innsbruck Games, when two athletes (one in luge, one in skiing) were killed during training before those Games opened. In 1992 in Albertville, France, Nicholas Bochatay of Switzerland, training for the demonstration sport of speed skiing, crashed into a snow-grooming machine on a public trail and died.

An investigation into the accident was under way. (ANI)