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 always a sad thing when a young person loses his life, especially in a situation where it seems so obvious what could have been done to prevent the tragedy. But is it all that obvious?
This track took considerable time to design and build. One assume those responsible consulted with the sports federations, the IOC and others who have designed and built courses. After construction and before the games countless inspections, measurements and test runs were conducted. There were literally tens of thousands of opportunities to discover a fatal flaw in the track, yet none was. This track isn't a carnival ride, put up tonight in time for the opening of the fair tomorrow.
I don't know if any competitions have been held on the track but there have certainly been numerous training runs. The track is fast, very fast. Yet as far as we know nobody suggested or demanded that Curve 13 posed an unusal or significant safety problem. And, at least so far, we havenl't heard about anyone demanding the particular pole involved needed to be padded.
Given the intense attention an $87 million dollar project cutomarily gets, particularly in the run up to an Olympics, I can only conclude that the reason why nobody demanded the padding on that particular pole is that they didn't think it was necessary. And we're not talking about civilians here. We're talking about athletes, coaches, trainers, designers and officials, all of whom were familiar with this track and none of whom apparantly saw a problem with the fatal pole.
And I'm confident that if somebody had raised the issue, the organizing committee would have fixed the problem. And if the sliders from the various events were convinced there was a safety problem it would have been a simple matter to threaten a boycott, issue a press release, and invite the media to listen to their concerns. I can't rule out the existance of a smoking gun document (sort of like Roger Beujolais (sp) telling NASA not to launch the Challenger) but absent that, I recommend we pause a moment before jumping to conclusions about who's responsible, who should pay and throwing around legal terms like negligence. One of the less attractive aspects of life in America these days is that we seem to want to head to the courhouse before we really know what happened and why.
Over the years the IOC has tried to keep from competing athletes who may be overmatched. Several Olympics ago the world was intrigued by Eddie the Eagle, the British ski jumper who was clearly outclassed, but plucky. The problem is, plucky can get you seriously injured or killed. That's why Eddie the Eagle would no longer be allowed to compete. I have no idea about the comptetance of the young man who was killed, but he evidently didn't have as much time on this course as desireable. Tragically, it's possible, the young man may have been overmatched by this course. We'll probably learn more in the coming days. Remember, the IOC does not conduct the competitions. The competitions are run by the various sports federations. Think of an Olympic Winter Games as a simultaneous world championship of all the winter sports, at one place and time.
Under any circumstances, this is a sad, sad day for this young man and his family, the Georgian Olympic team and the games in general.
