Comments on: Anger mounting against IOC in luger death with video

By: Knowing about Infoway is better than not knowing | NJN Network

Knowing about Infoway is better than not knowing | NJN Network — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:43:00 +0000

[...] already went toe-to-toe with other organizations who don’t like our reporting, like the IOC, on copyright fair dealing. The video will stay up as part of our news [...]

By: FIL to investigate luge death | NJN Network

FIL to investigate luge death | NJN Network — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:58:16 +0000

[...] Related story – Anger is mounting against IOC in death of luger [...]

By: IOC acting badly

IOC acting badly — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:20:16 +0000

[...] Pate, a PEI blogger, wrote “Anger is mounting against IOC in death of luger” on the NJN Network, and since posting it on Thursday, he’s received a take-down letter [...]

By: Mike metal mon

Mike metal mon — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:22:52 +0000

I fully support this guy standing up the IOC.

The IOC can’t order a Canadian to do anything in his own country, the can ask, but in Canada we can bend over ask them to kiss our ass.

I am glad this got on CBC – I hope this guy will take the up the job of researching costs and scams by the IOC – we need to get to the bottom and find out how much money was stolen and put the people in jail that have broken Canadian law.

Me Mike, I order the IOC to come clean and submit full records of spending on the Olympics – I order thee IOC to now give back stolen funds and hand over the criminals for their trials in Canada.

By: Sparx

Sparx — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:49:10 +0000

For those of us living in Vancouver this has been a major news event with significantly more information that seen outside of Canada. The conclusions so far as as follows.
1. The track design was approved by the FIL before being built.
2. The track the the fastest ever built
3. The completed track was approved by the FIL before athletes were allowed onto it.
4. The accident happened at 140 Km per hour – once he left the track the chance of surviving was already almost zero even without an obstacle for him to strike.

There was also a big drama because the other Lugers were upset that the track was shortened to slow it down as they did not want to compete on a “slow” track.

By: shonangreg

shonangreg — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:01:55 +0000

PS Njnnetwork, thanks for struggling to keep this video up. I could see from the video what happened. The error in the track design is made obvious from watching the video and giving the matter a little thought (as should have been done beforehand). Your photo and video *are* newsworthy.

By: shonangreg

shonangreg — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:57:04 +0000

Witch hunt? An accident? Of course it was an accident, but accidents are going to happen in sports. It is only reasonable that planning and design takes into account the errors and accidents that are going to happen. You wouldn’t put a crowd behind the target in archery, a wall behind the rim in basketball, or metal columns at the end of a curve in luge. It is predictable that someone will fly off the track at that point. Putting the columns there, especially when the track was so fast and athletes make mistakes on even slower tracks, is irresponsible. The governing body, whoever they are, has to be held accountable so they will insist on safe designs in the future. And the Olympic committee blaming this on “human error” is clueless and just unconscionable.

By: RG

RG — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:40:01 +0000

A lot of people (who are not, as whatever said, stating the obvious about it being a bad track and going on a witch hunt) are making sound comments with regards to:
- who exactly approved the track? Taking shots at the wrong people here. IF Canadians were making 300 runs on it, doesn’t it just take 1 for it to become fatal? So there’s a discrepancy with that favouritism comment
- All the so called Engineers, only John has made valid points
- Of course it’s a tragedy, and an accident, but if it was tested, I really doubt it was intended to kill someone. Obviously bad testing, but this brings it back to the first point…who exactly approved it?
- While Letterman’s rants are usually good when they are directed at O’reilly or some idiot, he also needs to put the story in perspective instead of riling up an angry mob. He should present all the arguments (like the ones above) instead of irresponsibly becoming some moral figurehead to the TV audience. He’s right about it not being fair to outright blame the luger, but he’s not completely right. Like the guy hasn’t made his fair share of mistakes this past year. Lucky it didn’t cost anyone their life.
- Luging is dangerous…fine line. Some people disagree that the course was too fast, in hindsight, most people do agree. What do you do now? Eye for an eye? Settlement maybe, but are you going to murder the designer?

By: Whatever

Whatever — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:55:21 +0000

Sounds like you folks are on a witch hunt.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:10:03 +0000

The track is obviously a deathtrap, not designed by a responsible engineer who would have had proper regard for safety.

Look at how the very wide, banked curve immediately precipitates into a small u-shaped channel. This is a small target to hit. The luger coming out of the curve must hit this small target, and stabilize all left-to-right oscillations at the same time. Placing beams at this point is insane; basically it imposes a death penalty for being wrong.

The transition from a curve to a straightaway must be much more enclosed.

Yes, of course there is no safe way of instantaneously decelerating a body from 140 km/h to zero. The proper solution for that is to have lots of clear space at any place where a derailment can occur, so that the person can slow down prior to striking anything. There can’t be anything there; no stones, not even a shrub.

Someone definitely needs to go to jail here.