Respect for the Dead: The Best Lesson from Nodar Kumaritashvili's Death

There are many dangerous sports. Many of them are also winter sports.

Traveling at high speeds over surfaces that are as slippery as...well, ice...is asking for trouble at the best of times.

But when you’re pushing the limits, it is occasionally going to end in tears.

Every now and then, someone pays the ultimate price for the pursuit of his or her passion. Today, Nodar Kumaritashvili, a young Georgian luger, died in a practice run for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Already, the recriminations have begun, and armchair experts are having their say as to what should have been done to prevent this tragedy. Many are pointing to the fact that the steel beams that Kumaritashvili hit were not padded in any way—as if a layer of foam would have altered the outcome.

Maybe safety nets would have helped—who knows—but it’s best left to the experts to make those judgments.

Much is also being made of the fact that athletes weren’t allowed access to the track earlier. How would that have helped? Not at all: The accident would just have happened earlier.

But the most disturbing thing to come out of this terrible incident has nothing to do with the accident itself. It is the clamour to see video footage of this accident—as if the death of a young athlete is somehow a spectator sport.

Even Bleacher Report is in on the act, running Lisa Horne’s piece on the accident as the lead article on the front page. The excuse is given that the video is there to inform comment—to educate us. Bullsh*t.

It is there to draw hits—nothing wrong with that; hits bring sponsors, and sponsors bring cash—but let’s at least be honest about it.

It is absolutely staggering that people will willingly seek out video of an athlete’s death. A quick YouTube search for video about Ayrton Senna unearths a number of videos of his terrible accident, many with around 2 million hits. No doubt similar accidents draw a similar number of hits.

The video of Kumaritashvili’s death was quickly withdrawn from YouTube. Sadly, the reason was that it breached copyright, not out of consideration for the young athlete’s dignity.

Occasionally, we bear witness to sporting tragedies while watching live sport. It is terrible, but unavoidable, and good broadcasters don’t dwell on the accident until the fate of the competitor is known.

It’s difficult to know where to draw the line on this one. Censorship is obviously not the answer, but having the video distributed on social networking sites and allegedly drawing comments of “cool” shows a complete lack of respect.

Maybe we could just hope for a collective outbreak of human decency. Not likely, I suppose.