Lugers Unimpressed by Track Changes in the Wake of Slider's Death

The show, as they say, must go on.

With the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili still fresh in everyone’s minds, the luge events have begun in earnest and the IOC now faces claims of an overreaction in the response to the young Georgian sliders death.

The track has been modified to try to prevent a recurrence of that terrible incident. A timber barrier has been constructed to prevent a slider from leaving the track and the remaining steel beams have been wrapped in what can best be described as high-school gym mats.

While this all makes perfect sense and would seem to be a reasonable response to the dangers involved, the organizers went a step further and moved the start positions.

The men now start from the women’s start and the women start from the children’s start. None of the athletes are particularly impressed by these changes and German slider Natalie Geisenberger went as far as to label it an insult.

The idea, it seems, is to slow the terminal speeds by using a lower start gate. The problem is that these athletes have trained for years for a particular type of start and now have to face something completely different.

The women have been particularly disadvantaged.  The new start position has them facing a tight corner immediately after the start, taking away the advantage of the fast starters.

Where they may have been able to get in five or six paddles before settling on the sled, they can now only get two or three before they hit the turn.

Some of the female sliders are claiming that the changes have changed the nature of the track so much that they now have the wrong sled for the job. That suggests that the changes have gone too far.

The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili could not be ignored. The track needed to be modified to prevent a recurrence of this horrific crash, but that was achieved with the installation of the barrier which would stop a slider from leaving the track.

Shortening the track is to add further insult to that already levelled at Kumaritashvili. The investigation has already laid the blame squarely with the slider and exonerated the track.

Now the organizers are saying that although there is nothing wrong with the track, we’ve shortened it because Kumaritashvili wasn’t good enough.

It is easy to completely eliminate accidents but, in doing so, the competitive element will suffer. That is surely, too high a price to pay.

The Olympics should be about seeing elite competition. The events should challenge the athletes and push them to—and sometimes beyond—their limits.

This, after all, is the nature of sport.