Kumaritashvili's death highlights winter sports risks (News Feature)

By John Bagratuni Feb 13, 2010, 2:04 GMT

Whistler, Canada - The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on Friday at the Vancouver Olympics highlights the danger of winter sport yet again.

Kumaritashvili is latest in a casualty list which also includes skiers Ulrike Maier, Gernot Reinstadler (both Austria) and Regine Cavagnoud (France) and Norwegian snowboarder Line Ostvold.

Every death has led to raised safety measures, but sports like ski racing, snowboarding, bob, luge or skeleton simply remain high-risk affairs.

'The continual addition of daredevil extreme sports to the Olympic programme, combined with technological and physical advancements that push the limits of speed in more traditional winter pursuits, have made the Winter Games an increasingly high-flying circus of terrifying rides, uncontrolled speeds and, in some cases, pure danger,' said the Washington Post.

Kumaritashvili's death added to the concerns over the Whistler Sliding Centre and the dangerously high speeds that have been achieved there.

'I am worried,' said world luge supremo Josef Fendt last year when confronted with German world champion Felix Loch hurtling down the track at almost 154kph.

Canadian authorities were probing the fatal crash on Friday and it was too early to point fingers in any directions. International Olympic Committee president did definitely not want to touch this issue, insisting that 'this is a time for sorrow.'

When Maier crashed to her death during a 1994 super-g race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, her partner sued race organizers, but a German court said that Maier did not hit a wooden timing device but rather a pile of snow with her head.

Reinstandler died of internal bleeding three years earlier after crashing at high speed into the safety netting at the Wengen, Switzerland, downhill.

Both events led to increased safety measures such as different nettings and blue lines indicating the course direction.

But no measure helped when Cavagnoud collided with a German coach during training in Austria and died two days later in 2001.

Luge has seen its fair share of disaster as well, most notably when Briton Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki died in training ahead of the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck.

Australian alpine skier Ross Milne also died ahead of those Olympics after crashing into a tree.

In 1992, Swiss skier Nicholas Bochatay was killed during training for the demonstration sport of speed skiing at the Albertville Games.

Luckily not all accidents had fatal endings but they have nonetheless ended careers like that of Austrian skier Matthias Lanzinger, whose lower leg had to be amputated after a crash.

Swiss Daniel Albrecht was lucky to survive a horror crash in Kitzbuehel last year and is yet to return to skiing. The career of Frenchman Pierre-Emmanuel Dalcin could be over due to injuries sustained in a Beaver Creek fall in December.

Crashes this season also ended the Olympic dream of Canadian downhill world champion John Kucera, Austrian ski star Niki Hosp and American snowboarder Kevin Pearce, who almost died in january.

The large number of incidents in late 2009 led to a new safety debate, but FIS race director Guenther Hujara said that safe skiing will never be possible.

'I always hope that nothing bad happens. But it is a wrong approach, which comes from the outside, that assumes a sport can be safe. We are a sport in which crashes are part of the movement,' said Hujara.