Well, hope to contribute to what's going on in the world of sports. Other than the UNO Mavericks beating Michigan today in college ice hockey, the Winter Olympics have started so feel free to post regarding the competitions.
I'll start with the first news I found out about the 2010 games... sad indeed...
Winter Olympics Luge Crash: Nodar Kumaritashvili DIES
WHISTLER, British Columbia — It took only three seconds.
Sliding faster than ever in his life, 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili had one turn left in his final Olympic training run. Flirting with 90 mph on a $100 million track pushing speed to the outer limits, the luger from the republic of Georgia tilted his head slightly forward as his sled climbed the high-banked wall.
His last move.
Kumaritashvili lost control, crashing into the wall entering the final straightaway. His body went airborne, arms and legs flailing over the opposite side of the track, his upper body smashing into an unpadded steel pole as his sled continued skidding down the track. It all took just 48.9 seconds, start to crash.
Paramedics began working on Kumaritashvili within seconds, quickly starting chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, all to no avail.
The IOC said Kumaritashvili was pronounced dead at a trauma center in Whistler.
Less than an hour after the accident, a representative from each team was told the grim news.
With that, tears began flowing across the close-knit sliding world and throughout the Olympic family.
"I have no words," a teary International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said, "to say what we feel."
WARNING: VIDEO AND PICS ARE GRAPHIC Kiddies are warned, here be pictures
RIP to a young athlete. People have been worrying about how dangerous the track is. The same day 12 others had trouble getting through a practice run down the track. Several crashed but nothing too serious. Well, one woman was knocked unconscious for a few minutes...
I heard about that before the opening ceremony started. Very tragic, indeed.
During the ceremony, they had a moment of silence for him.
Should we put netting or padding on corners where competitors could fly off? nah, let's fill them with concrete and steel pilers!
>=/ to spend $100 million of the event and put the athletes safety last is major f****ng fail for the ioc.
Apparently, it's now occurred to them to raise the wall at that corner.
It doesn't surprise me that they haven't cancelled the event - there's too much money riding on the Olympics these days. But given the number of reports about accidents and safety on the track beforehand and afterwards (and yes, I appreciate that the track had a reputation for being one of the fastest in the world and dangerous before the Olympics even got there), it was the closest I've seen anything get for a while.
Anyone else watch the opening ceremonies? Almost every part of them, I started out thinking, "Okay, this is kinda cool. I like the use of video projectors and LEDs," but then went on for too long. Especially the part where the kid was flying and the golden stuff was flying all over the place. That got tedious real fast.
Still overall, it was okay, and topping it off with kd lang singing Lenard Cohen was a nice touch, although I'm not sure what that song has to do with peace. Too bad about the torch not working, but I have to say that torch was fairly unimpressive anyway. I mean, in 1994, they lit the torch by ski jumping. This was not as cool, even if it did look like Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
Should we put netting or padding on corners where competitors could fly off? nah, let's fill them with concrete and steel pilers!
>=/ to spend $100 million of the event and put the athletes safety last is major f****ng fail for the ioc.
Would it even matter if there was padding on the bars? Unfortunetly at the speed he was going the results would be the same...
Deceleration from 90mph to 0mph over 10-15cm compared to 0.1mm "might've" reduced the chances of the injuries being fatal.
(Would it even matter if there was padding on the bars? Unfortunetly at the speed he was going the results would be the same...)
tires would've been good. i'm sure there's something they could've done to avoide such a fatality.
Does the Canadian's women hockey team know about the mercy rule?
To quote the 1992 USA Basketball Dream Team
"...Nope!"
