Driver error led to death: Staudinger
Last Updated: Saturday, February 13, 2010 | 10:21 PM ET
The Canadian Press
A family looks at a makeshift memorial for Nodar Kumaritashvili. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)Canadian luge coach Wolfgang Staudinger says driver error, not the lightning-fast Whistler course, led to the death of a 21-year-old slider from Georgia in a training run crash at the Vancouver Olympics.
"It was not a track issue. It was a driver error — 100 per cent," the coach told The Canadian Press on Saturday, referring to the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili. "There must have been a huge driving error."
The Canadian coach, who won bronze as a doubles slider for Germany at the 1988 Olympics, also criticized the push to get more "exotic" athletes into the Games.
"It's serious business," Staudinger said of luge. "It's not just like sliding on a kids' hill on a Krazy Karpet."
Staudinger was reacting to the decision from officials with the International Luge Federation (FIL), the sport's governing body, to move the start lines for men's, women's and doubles luge events down the 1,450-metre, 16-turn course to reduce speeds and keep the athletes safe.
The men will now start at the women's and doubles teams start line, on Corner 3. The women and doubles teams will drop down to the junior start leading into Corner 6.
Medal competition was set to begin Saturday night with the first two events in the men's singles.
"The primary concern we have right now is the emotional aspect [of the athletes]," FIL secretary-general Svein Romstad told an earlier news conference.
The sliders had been hitting world-record speeds of more than 150 km/h on the course during previous competitions and during training sessions this week for the Olympic Games. Romstad said starting lower down will change the men's speed by about 10 km/h.
"It's not necessarily very significant speed [difference], he said.
Romstad also disagreed with the assertion that Kumaritashvili, who competed in just five World Cup events this year and had 26 runs on the Whistler course, was out of his depth.
"This is a large number of runs for an athlete of his character," he said.
The mood was sombre at the sliding centre Saturday morning as the men wrapped up their final training runs.
Racers wore small strips of black tape on one side of their helmets to remember Kumaritashvili. Orange padding was wrapped around the support poles along the stretch of track where he died, even though FIL officials said earlier that such padding would do little to help and that the main goal was to keep the athlete from ever flying off the track in the first place.
Levan Gureshidze, the lone remaining Georgian luge slider, did not take his final two training runs, but was seen around the track wearing a black armband.
"We didn't have that joy today like we usually do," said Shiva Keshavan of India. "We'll keep him in our hearts and honour his commitment as an athlete."
Canadian slider Jeff Christie said the death of a fellow slider "eats you inside" and serves as a "constant reminder of the risks you take."
But he acknowledged that everyone processes grief in different ways. While some competitors appear deeply affected, he said, "some guys up [at the start house] are giggling."
The times were slower, as predicted. German speed demon Felix Loch was averaging 151 km/h Friday but was 144 km/h Saturday.
American slider Tony Benshoof said the mood of the event has changed from earlier in the week, when there were multiple crashes by sliders, one that knocked a Romanian woman unconscious.
"The track is significantly simpler and safer from the ladies' starts. There's a lot more chatter in the start house. The guys are just more relaxed," he said.
Sliders agreed that starting from the women's line also changes the dynamics of the event and forces last-minute changes to race strategy.
The hill coming off the men's start is far steeper than the women's. While both sides push out of a pair of start handles to begin their descent, the women have to paddle longer with their palms on the ice to pick up speed. Now the men have to, as well.
Also, a simpler course means the best drivers have lost the advantage. A mediocre driver who can start fast now has a better shot at winning.
Canada's Ian Cockerline said he's not a fast starter and needed the speed from a steep decline.
"If you're not leading at the start it's going to be very difficult to make up time. It's disappointing. I wanted to race from the men's start. That's where my advantage is. Now I'm looking up at it."
Kumaritashvili died coming around the final sweeping 270-degree panoramic curve, nicknamed Thunderbird, which catapults the slider into the final Turn 16, and then the finish line.
He was hitting maximum speed, close to 145 km/h, with a G-force of 5, when he lost control in Turn 16. His sled flipped out from under him, propelling him the other way, up and over the wall, where his head and back slammed into a metal post with a sickening gong sound.
Medics performed CPR on him on scene but within an hour he was officially declared dead.
Romstad said analysis showed that the run was routine until Kumaritashvili took the wrong driving line into Thunderbird.
"Although he attempted to correct the situation, he shot up into the roof of Curve 16. The angle in which he did so resulted in him experiencing a G-force that literally collapsed his body, rendering it difficult to control the sled.
"Once this happened, he was literally at the mercy of the path of the sled."
Officials have now built up the wall in that area and have changed the shape of the ice on the track to keep athletes from flying out.
Staudinger said he wanted the men's start line left where it was.
"We all were ready to race from the top," said the coach, adding at a team meeting Friday afternoon he didn't see any Canadian racers who were "particularly shaken up."
The new configuration will negate Canada's experience advantage on the track and make the men's competition exceptionally close, he said.
"It's changing the entire thing," he said. The track "is absolutely safe. The track was safe before."
Staudinger, a former coach with the high-powered German luge team, was lured to Canada two years ago to overhaul the program on a contract that will take him through the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.
Staudinger has galvanized the program along the German model, focusing on strength training for faster start times and having sleds custom-built in house.
Canada has had very little international success in luge and has never won an Olympic medal, but athletes are making progress under Staudinger. Women's racer Alex Gough is ranked seventh in the world and is Canada's best hope for a medal at the Games. Canada has taken some criticism for not letting opponents train extensively at Whistler in order to maintain home track advantage.
Keshavan said that must change, especially with inexperienced sliders.
"Home advantage is one thing, but the competitiveness should not go overboard," he said.
Staudinger said home track advantage is an accepted informal convention, noting that before the 2006 Turin Games, Canada was supposed to get 35 training runs but ended up with 15.
At Whistler, he said, everyone has had 40.
"We offered, based on the rules, all necessary training runs that we had to. On top of that, we offered systematic training above the call of duty than we were supposed to," he said. "For anybody to speculate we did not offer enough training is false."
