A memorial to Kumaritashvili near the luge track that took his life last week. Getty Images
The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili last week has certainty put a dark cloud over what should be a joyous event – the world’s best competing on the world stage.
But now people are wondering why he died and whose fault it was. Olympic and Canadian officials say it was human error, that Kumaritashvili was inexperienced. Others say it wasn’t his fault but the track’s. The track, some say, was built to extremes, making it too dangerous for some competitors.
Many questions will be asked in the sport because of Kumaritashvili’s death, but here are some simple ones: Is the course created in Vancouver the limit? Was it too dangerous? If it was human error and inexperience, shouldn’t there been someone to say, “You can’t do this, you don’t have the skill?”
It seems that in any scenario like this, the questions are only asked after someone is hurt.
But there is one other question I have – Is this a surprise?
Everything in life is dangerous. You get in a car, you could get hurt. You cross the street, you could get hit. When you lie down on a small sled, going downhill on a sheet of ice at speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour, you could get hurt. That’s a fact.
Associated Content has more of these questions and the controversy.
-Justin Franz
alysebackus
DustinAskim
gillette36
gradyhiggins
kendracousineau
mhuds
nicksnyg72
Nate
Nadia
No Fair! 
I don’t think this is a huge surprise. It’s horrible that he was killed but it’s not a surprise that he crashed. The limits have to be pushed every olympics. Nodar knew that and he chose to compete. There were a good number of crashes during practice on the luge. Unfortunately one ended in a death. Some sports require athletes who are willing to risk more than some people think is smart, this is one of them. Of course his level of experience did play a part in his crash because the track simply can’t kill people. That would be the same as saying that a wet highway was the cause of a drivers death. The highway is not to blame, the driver who was hydroplaning is to blame. You can play it safe and get home a few minutes later than you’d like or you can push those limits and unfortunately sometime that results in disaster.
It is a “surprise” that he was killed. Though not a surprise that there was an accident. From what I’ve read their were others, including Kumaritashvili, who had trouble with the track in the practice runs. It is upsetting to me that after such a tragic accident, the luge event is still being held. If it was a case of human error, then there should have been somebody after the first mistakes were made saying “I don’t know if competeing is safe for you.” This is a hard one to tackle as far as who to blame. Hopefully the outcome of this tragedy will be more inspection and caution when participating in activities like this that can be dangerous.
I agree with Emily, it is no surprise that there was an accident, but a large surprise that he died. There have only been four deaths at the Olympics. I think that specifically winter Olympians have a different mindset than normal people. They launch themselves into the air seeing how many rotations they can do, they see how far they can project their bodies off of jumps, the thrown themselves down ski hills at 90+ mph, they strap themselves to a luges or skeletons, they do things that most humans don’t have the balls to do. By doing these things, crashes are always present. But for a death to occur resulting not so much from the crash, but more from the poor structure he was racing on, this is the unfortunate part. The crash itself wasn’t horrible, but the idea of the committee to place a low wall coming out of a turn, and a uncovered support pole right after it is the thing that should be called into question.
But wouldn’t you agree that the issue was addressed by lowering the starting line for both male and female lugers? Again it is tragic that someone died, but I feel that it is bound to happen at least once, I think it is the nature of what they do which is no where near being safe.