Ongoing crashes at sliding track intensify criticism

The controversy surrounding the safety of the Olympic sliding track escalated even more Thursday when some of the world’s best bobsledders found the track difficult to navigate, leading to at least 11 crashes over two days of training.

Among those was gold-medal favorite Beat Hefti of Switzerland, the top-ranked two-man driver in the world. He was suffering from a severe headache and still needs medical clearance to participate in Saturday’s two-man competition. His coach said he plans to take a practice run on Friday.

Meanwhile, the head of the Olympic committee from the Republic of Georgia issued a strong rebuke against the track, saying the responsibility for the accident that killed luger Nodar Kumaritashvili belongs with those who built what’s being called the world’s fastest track.

“I exclude the possibility that Nodar [Kumaritashvili] was not experienced enough,” committee president Giorgi Natsvlishlili said in a televised interview. “From my point of view, the track was at fault.”

Kumaritashvili, 21 and in his second season, was killed within sight of the finish line as he was ejected from the track at nearly 90 mph during the final training run.

Now, one week after his death, the questions far outnumber the answers. Officials from both FIL, the international luge federation, and the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee have closed ranks, insisting the track is safe and blaming pilot error for the crash. The top athletes have largely stayed on message, expressing their sadness and condolences and little more.

But the anger over the track conditions is mounting even as extra training runs are being added by the bobsled federation “out of an abundance of caution.” Still, there remains one question that haunts this controversial chute of concrete and ice: Did the desire for speed outweigh the need for safety?

It’s a question the luge federation may try to answer. In a statement released Thursday, the FIL said it will gather information and “determine how best to move forward.” It plans to make the report public by the end of March.

The concerns over the safety of the track began before Kumaritashvili’s death. The slider’s father, head of Georgia’s luge federation, said his son expressed fear in a phone call just before he died.

And a slider from Venezuela said he sent warning letters to luge officials warning of the dangers after he crashed in training last November and failed to qualify for his third Olympics.

Statistics provided by the track show that in the 30,477 runs of the luge, bobsled and skeleton that occurred prior to the Olympics, there were 340 rollovers that required medical attention. It leads to another question: Is 1% an acceptable level of risk?

Since higher walls were erected in the area of the crash and the start lines were lowered to ratchet down the speeds on the track, the only communication from luge and VANOC officials has been Thursday’s statement. Requests to speak with officials have been rejected or ignored.

Natalie Geisenberger of Germany, the women’s silver medalist, gave voice to what many people are wondering: “They had to do that one year earlier . . . not when one is dead. It’s too late. They are afraid now.”

Certainly there were warning signs as the track went from concept to reality.

The building and certification of an Olympic track follows a fairly standard procedure. Once a host city is awarded the Olympics and site is selected for the venue, the process of building a single refrigerated track for luge, bobsled and skeleton begins.

A designer is hired. In the case of six Olympics, that man has been Udo Gurgel, an engineer based in Frankfurt, Germany, whose work must be approved by the two sports federations and members of the Olympic organizing committee. A local contractor translates Gurgel’s computer-generated design into a mile-long cement chute.

Construction of the $105-million Whistler track took two years. VANOC announced that each curve and bank was within one to three millimeters of Gurgel’s blueprints.

Then came testing in March 2008 by elite athletes of all three disciplines during a certification process called homologation. During more than 200 runs, sliders reached speeds in the low 90s. Tony Bensoof, America’s most decorated singles slider, called navigating the track “a handful.”

Canada’s Jeff Christie, a 2006 Olympian, proclaimed it “a challenging and fast track which is going to test our skills mentally, physically and technologically. Not just for Canada’s athletes but for the world’s best athletes.”

If the word, “dangerous,” was spoken, it wasn’t for public record.

In approving the track, Walter Plaikner, chairman of the FIL technical committee and Italy’s head coach, announced, “There is almost nothing to change.”

Final inspection by the FIL occurred over two days in September 2008. Less than two months later, international training sessions began and sliders started crashing, including world champion Felix Loch, who won the gold medal this week. Speeds reached 92.58 mph.

Although the FIL said a “crash rate” of 3% was within tolerance for a new track, the blistering speeds gave its president, Josef Fendt, pause.

“We’ve always assumed that, on principle, top speeds of [83.3 mph or 84.5 mph] were possible,” he said in a statement. “But we didn’t reckon with such a leap.”

Fendt ordered new tracks to be constructed with lower speeds but did nothing to alter the Whistler configuration.

At the first World Cup competition last February, speeds inched upward.

“It is the first time that we’ve had athletes reaching speeds up to [89.48 mph] per hour in training,” said Plaikner. “With proper race preparation we should be up to [93.2 mph], which is about as fast as we can go in our sport.”

Loch made that pronouncement moot when he set the track record at 95.6 mph on his second run.

Although crashes continued, none of them exposed the area that sent Kumaritashvili to his death as a safety problem. “Tracks are supposed to be designed to keep athletes inside, where a crash can be controlled, where it’s safer,” said John Morgan, a network analyst and former bobsledder. “That obviously didn’t happen here. Why?”

And no one apparently questioned why unprotected roof support posts were so close to the edge of the track and at the end of a stretch where the highest speeds occur. Kumaritashvili’s head hit one of those posts when he was ejected from the track.

“That’s like planting a tree in the middle of a ski slope,” said Andrew Tudor, president of Meridian One, a suburban Chicago laboratory that performs accident reconstruction and provides expert testimony in court. “They built a track so he could kill himself and then they’re saying it’s his fault. I’d take this case in a heartbeat.”

In the last decade, three of the newest luge tracks have been roundly criticized for being unsafe: Lake Placid, N.Y.; Cesana, Italy; and now Whistler. One German track has been altered to reflect technological advances and another is scheduled for modification.

At the 2000 Goodwill Games in Lake Placid, three of the world’s top-ranked luge sliders went home rather than compete on a new $24-million track they considered unsafe. The state of New York, which pays for its operation, lowered the start house. Since that time, it has played host to 11 World Cup luge events and the 2009 world championships for all three disciplines.

The need to be the fastest is nothing new and is not limited to luge. Twenty men were injured at the 1963 bobsled world championships at the new track at Igls, Austria. Injuries ranged from concussions and teeth ripped to the gum line to three leg fractures and dislocations. During one crash, a Canadian driver’s throat was slashed ear to ear. (The winning driver, Italy’s Sergio Zardini, was decapitated three years later in Lake Placid when his sled crushed him against the top of a curve known as Zig-Zag).

On the same track, two weeks before luge was introduced in the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Polish-born British racer Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski was killed in a training run.

Until last week, his death was the last in the sport.

candy.thomson@ baltsun.com