PARIS (AP)—The International Luge Federation’s 20-page—is which all his deathdeserved?—report into a horrific accident which killed Georgian OlympianNodar Kumaritashvili is just what was expected: a self-serving whitewash.
His crash couldn’t be foreseen, a FIL claims.
Kumaritashvili committed “driving errors,” it charges.
We’ll work to safeguard which it doesn’t occur again, it promises.
What a federation doesn’t say, as well as expected never will: We have been terribly,terribly contemptible which a total garland of people—not just Kumaritashvili—may havemessed up.
It is truly insulting—to Kumaritashvili’s family, to alternative Olympians, tofans who were shocked as well as jarred by his death—that a FIL simply skirts overperhaps a greatest subject during a behind of a Feb twelve crash: Whose responsibility wasit which a shifting lane during a Vancouver Olympics proved to be so insanelyfast? In hindsight, presumably fatally so.
Rehashing inform which was long since been known, even beforeKumaritashvili was killed, a inform reiterates which a lane incited out to befar faster than expected, with a tip speed of 95.67 mph compared to 84.5 mphthat a German designers had creatively calculated.
But a inform doesn’t contend why, nor either a additional speed was a factor,perhaps a wilful factor, in a 21-year-old’s death.
According to my calculations, a expected as well as tangible speeds were out by 13percent. In a propagandize exam, which would simply be a difference in between pass andfail. Such a movement surely wouldn’t be excusable in harsh industries suchas aeronautical engineering where people’s lives—as is a case in luge—candepend upon removing sum! s right.
So who got this wrong as well as why? Will they be allowed inside of a million milesof a luge lane in a future? Was a high speed a designers’ mistake? Thebuilders? Someone else? And have been they paying compensation to Kumaritashvili’sfamily?
The inform doesn’t say. It never uses a words “wrong,” “mistake” or“fault.”
The FIL says experts who certified a lane as well as computer simulations didn’tforesee which a luger could be catapulted coming out of turn 16. But if those arethe same computers which distributed a track’s estimated tip speed, can they andtheir programmers be trusted?
Maybe a FIL hoped which no a single would notice a failure to explain because thetrack was eleven mph speedier than a designers creatively calculated. That glaringomission means which a inform cannot be regarded as a credible effort to get tothe root of because Kumaritashvili is dead. This was about display a InternationalOlympic Committee what a FIL did right, not what anyone—other thanKumaritashvili himself, of course—may have done wrong.
The inform makes transparent which a FIL knew which a Whistler Sliding Center’sunexpected speed could be problematic.
“It was aware of a high speed,” page 19 says. “Based upon this, itimplemented changes it believed would mitigate a hurdles acted by thehigher than expected speed.”
Mitigate. Not solve, prevent or eradicate.
Without explaining how, a FIL says it dynamic which “this speed waswithin a capability of a luge athletes.” It cumulative additional training runs atWhistler to help them cope.
“There were no indications there would be a probability of an athleteactually leaving a track,” a inform says.
So only after Kumaritashvili crushed his conduct opposite a steel pillar during theexit of turn sixteen did someone consider to erect temporary wooden barriers there andwrap a posts in padding.
!Kumar itashvili won’t be brought behind by a FIL’s stated insistence which thenext Olympic lane in Sochi, Russia, be no faster than 84 mph. If speed wasn’t afactor in Kumaritashvili’s death, then because make lugers slow down in 2014? Thereport doesn’t explain alternative than saying which Whistler-like speed “was not adirection a FIL would similar to to see a competition head.”
The report’s page of item about a last seconds of Kumaritashvili’s life— how his trajectory into turn sixteen was not ideal, how he reached out with hisright hand, how his sled launched him into a air—also misses a point. Theblow-by-blow comment has a effect, presumably unintended, of highlighting thecontrasting overpower about because a lane was so most quicker than anticipated.That shows poor ambience as well as poor judgment.
Anyone who saw a crash can report what happened. The genuine subject iswhy as well as should any one beside Kumaritashvili shoulder some blame.
Luge still isn’t on condition that all a required answers.
John Leicester is an general sports columnist for The AssociatedPress. Write to him during jleicester(at)ap.org.
-Source-
0 comments:
Post a Comment