The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

[PrezdeJohnson09]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Are you kidding, you know how many people will tune in to watch after they hear about this?

Don't forget, we're a sick, sick society.

Sadly i feel you're exactly right, which is probably part of the reason why the IOC didn't care about the danger of the course.

As far as America...it's the "That's awful...I'm glad that's not me" mentality that drives people to watch this kind of horrific story in record numbers.

NBC just got their golden egg. Instant ratings boost for tonight's opening ceremony.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Are you kidding, you know how many people will tune in to watch after they hear about this?

Don't forget, we're a sick, sick society.

That's true, just look at NASCAR. Think they'd get ratings if they never had crashes?

 

[BoomGoestheDynamite]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Are you kidding, you know how many people will tune in to watch after they hear about this?

Don't forget, we're a sick, sick society.

I was talking more about legal liability for the IOC, not the people who will inevitably tune in to rubber neck.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

I was talking more about legal liability for the IOC, not the people who will inevitably tune in to rubber neck.

If this was an athlete from the US the nation would be up in arms and we'd be calling for heads. I agree with you. This can't go on. The lawsuits are going to fly.

 

[walrus]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

God knows you need one with the way you've been jumping on everyone's d!ck today.

Did you forget to take your tampon out?

How is that different than any other day?

 

[unofan]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Point taken. But still, the fact that the IOC is trying to cover their arses over the media mess this should become rather than thinking ahead of time and designing a safer course is B.S.

Why is it copyright infringement if people are posting videos from news sources? The IOC shouldn't be able to claim copyright to that.

The IOC doesn't design the venues.

And the IOC gives media sites the license to broadcast their events. They don't give joe blow youtube poster the right to, and the media can't, either.

 

[Puck Swami]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Anybody that goes down a ice chute in spandex at 90 mph is risking death. That's the very attraction of the sport. That's why people watch. All tracks are inherently unsafe. Just as life is sometimes unsafe. People die every day in the bathtub - do we cancel baths? Do we stop driving our cars? Come on now, That's what separates lugers from the rest of the population - it's their tolerance for severe danger.

Nodar died doing what he loved, and the competition should go on. The lugers have toiled in obscurity for four years, and have worked very hard for their moment of triumph. It should be up to them if they want to compete.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Anybody that goes down a ice chute in spandex at 90 mph is risking death. That's the very attraction of the sport. That's why people watch. All tracks are inherently unsafe. Just as life is sometimes unsafe. People die every day in the bathtub - do we cancel baths? Do we stop driving our cars? Come on now, That's what separates lugers from the rest of the population - it's their tolerance for severe danger.

Nodar died doing what he loved, and the competition should go on. The lugers have toiled in obscurity for four years, and have worked very hard for their moment of triumph. It should be up to them if they want to compete.

With all due respect, do you honestly believe that a luge track should have steel posts in place where a lugers body could end up? Seems like insanity to me.........but I digress.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Anybody that goes down a ice chute in spandex at 90 mph is risking death. That's the very attraction of the sport. That's why people watch. All tracks are inherently unsafe. Just as life is sometimes unsafe. People die every day the bathtub - do we cancel baths? Come on now, That's what separates lugers from the rest of the population - it's their tolerance for severe danger.

Nodar died doing what he loved, and the competition should go on. The lugers have toiled in obscurity for four years, and have worked very hard for their moment of triumph. It should be up to them if they want to compete.

Call me crazy but I don't care to die at 21 even if I'm in the middle of the thing I love the most.

There's a difference between inherenty unsafe and the design of this track. They were reckless in trying to create some sort of super-luge track that pushed the envelope way too far. Look at the portion he died on. There are steel beems completely exposed right after a turn. This is the definition of negligent. There is a corner on the bobsled track that the athletes are calling "50:50 corner" because it's so dangerous that you have about a 50:50 shot at crashing.

They pushed the envelope and someone died as a direct result of their incompetence.

 

[PrezdeJohnson09]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

The IOC doesn't design the venues.

And the IOC gives media sites the license to broadcast their events. They don't give joe blow youtube poster the right to, and the media can't, either.

They may not design the venues but I'm pretty sure they have to give the okay on the venue meeting their standards etc yada yada. They had to have known the inherent danger of this course beforehand and still gave the okay.

Yes the IOC gives the media sites the license to broadcast their events and some of those clips that were posted were news stories. If a youtube poster posts a video of a news story isn't that video now the property of the media source and not the IOC?

Puckswami,

I agree that you can obviously have accidents in any situation. But in this case they knew they were creating the world's fastest course and testing these athletes abilities and limits even more than in the past.

When does it go too far?

It's pretty obvious the human body has limits and obviously there are physics involved in a human being sliding down an ice sheet into a turn that might be too tight or too much banking for the speed the athlete will be reaching and almost certainly result in a crash, which is the way some of the athletes have described it and jugding by the amount of crashes on the course, there is legitimacy to that claim.

 

[PrezdeJohnson09]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Call me crazy but I don't care to die at 21 even if I'm in the middle of the thing I love the most.

There's a difference between inherenty unsafe and the design of this track. They were reckless in trying to create some sort of super-luge track that pushed the envelope way too far. Look at the portion he died on. There are steel beems completely exposed right after a turn. This is the definition of negligent. There is a corner on the bobsled track that the athletes are calling "50:50 corner" because it's so dangerous that you have about a 50:50 shot at crashing.

They pushed the envelope and someone died as a direct result of their incompetence.

Exactly.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Signs were all over the place that this was a real probability, including a quote from a female last night that, "we're talking about our lives" and, "they're using us as guinea pigs" or something like that. This goes way beyond the sport being dangerous, this is pure and utter negligence.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Signs were all over the place that this was a real probability, including a quote from a female last night that, "we're talking about our lives" and, "they're using us as guinea pigs" or something like that. This goes way beyond the sport being dangerous, this is pure and utter negligence.

I watched him crash live. It was horrific. If they do not cancel the luge I will not watch.

 

[Puck Swami]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

It's up to the athlete to decide whether or not to participate. 10 of the 16 winter Olympic sports require helmets because of severe danger. Everyone who participates knows the dangerous and severe risks involved in sports invloving high speed, slick surfaces, sharp edges, flying objects or other inherent risks. Safety? There is no such thing as a safe luge track. If it were about safety, they'd all be curling. If you fly off the ice track at 40, 60, or 90 mph, you can clearly die from that. What is an acceptable level of risk in a daredevil sport? The human body was never really designed to hurtle down a chute of ice at 90 mph. Lugers challenge and defy physics every day - they love the adrenalin rush and the chance to "conquer" difficult courses. That's why they do it, and that's why we watch it.

Track designers push the envelope just as athletes do. That's how you go faster, higher, stronger. It's the path of human progress, and some people DO die as collateral damage.

We can argue about placement of unpadded poles and barriers and other hazards, but the fact remains that these sports are designed to be seriously dangerous from day 1.

 

[BadgerAlum@WMU]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

I watched him crash live. It was horrific. If they do not cancel the luge I will not watch.

They could move it to the Calgary run--some of us talked about that as a possibility.

Don't they usually do test competitions or World Cup runs on these tracks before the Olympics to be certain of their safety?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

They could move it to the Calgary run--some of us talked about that as a possibility.

Don't they usually do test competitions or World Cup runs on these tracks before the Olympics to be certain of their safety?

I think that would be perfectly fine if it's ok with the athletes.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Track designers push the envelope just as athletes do. That's how you go faster, higher, stronger. It's the path of human progress, and some people DO die as collateral damage.

We can argue about placement of unpadded poles and barriers and other hazards, but the fact remains that these sports are designed to be seriously dangerous from day 1.

I can see no reason for unpadded steel posts to be set where the human body could possibly fly. He didn't die because of the speed of the track. He didn't die because of the daredevil level of the sport. He died because of a complete disregard for safety and physics. If there had been plexiglass walls along that corridor (for instance) like a hockey rink and no exposed poles sitting there he would have lived. You can't have any part of the human body riding at those speeds and then have them able to run into something that causes them to come to a complete stop instantly with no give. Ridiculous.

 

[state of hockey]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

If you want to see the incident you can on buzzfeed. There is a YouTube video that does not show it, but links it. I copied the link, but am thinking twice about posting it.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

If you want to see the incident you can on buzzfeed. There is a YouTube video that does not show it, but links it. I copied the link, but am thinking twice about posting it.

I captured the video from the live feed back before I knew he died.

 

[Puck Swami]

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Official Thread of the Run-Up to the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada

Don't they usually do test competitions or World Cup runs on these tracks before the Olympics to be certain of their safety?

They do test runs, but there can't be any track that you can be "certain of safety"

In the tracks at Calgary and Lake Placid, the make you sign a four page waiver that says "DEATH" in capital letters about five or six times times even to take a tourist ride down the track at about 40-60 mph. These guys are going much faster than that.