Winter Olympics

[Buoy]

Anyone else less fortunate, and not in Miami, and watching the Olympics??

I'm enjoying it.
Ohno is kicking az in the speed skating.

Now, the luge thing has me a bit pizzed. I'm sorry to hear a young guy lost his life in practice the other day, but when you lay down on a board with two ice skates under it, and go down a course at +95 mph, that's the risk you take. I feel for his friends and family.
That being said, I think it sucks that they shortened the course to slow it down for everyone still competing. Compare it to boat racing. If you trained for 4 years to run +95mph, and suddenly they cut the max speed... I don't think that is fair to the guys that did their homework, and tested and prepared to the top of their game.
any thoughts?

 

[THEJOKER]

I've been watching also. Yea sad on the guy getting killed. If they were going to shorten the course they should of done it before someone had to die. I couldn't believe the exposed beams on the course...........go USA!

 

[rchevelle71]

We were watching some of the olympics while at dinner tonight(my cuban neighbor was with us at the bar, and cheering on USA), and some when we got back to the house, Luge is kinda crazy, but so is offshore racing.:driving: Imagine being 30 miles from Miami, and having some VERY close connectons with Cigarette, Fountain, Active Thunder, and AMF, and not going to the show, but got a lot to get done around here, and can visit those places any time I want:sifone:

 

[Gladhe8er]

I love the winter Olympics. USA did well today with 4 medals(leads all countries).

 

[YoungPerformance]

I love the Olympics, both the Summer and Winter. Been watching it all evening while working.
I am very sorry the hear about the Luge accident. Shortening the course has a lot of them screwed up. They are now taking different lines through the corners because of the change in speed. Some of the favorites are not doing so well with the course change.
Eddie

 

[Buoy]

I love the Olympics, both the Summer and Winter. Been watching it all evening while working.
I am very sorry the hear about the Luge accident. Shortening the course has a lot of them screwed up. They are now taking different lines through the corners because of the change in speed. Some of the favorites are not doing so well with the course change.
Eddie

That's what I was also thinking.
I'm sorry the young man lost his life, but that is part of the sport - great risk.
Not much different than boat racing.
I don't like the fact that they shortened the course, and now everyone else has had to adapt to going through the corners at a lower speed than they had trained at. As professionals, they should have had the course dialed in, and to change it at the last minute is not fair to them.

 

[Audiofn]

Even the top teams were crashing from what I heard? Sounds like it was a little to radical of a course?

 

[Ratickle]

The course is the fastest course in the world. By far some say.

To me the big issue was the Canadians would not let others train on there more than a couple times because they wanted to give the advantage to their racers, so it is their issue. Their racers were training on the course for a long time and have had no real serious accidents, but they could practice over and over and work their way up to the top sppeds needed to win. The other racers, who they would not allow on the course until now, had to push it right at the beginning to try and get competitive with very little practice.

After reviewing the course, I do believe they could have made it a little safer with some padding in key places, but hitting a padded steel beam at 90 vs an unpadded one may not make a whole lot of difference.

In their defense, if they had not slowed down the track, and another died, it would be a major catastrophe for the Olympics and a possible end of Luge in the Olympics for the future.

 

[fund razor]

When you need to "tweak" the course, and that "tweak" is a huge plywood retaining wall... maybe you were off on your original calculations.

The basketball pole padding as a solution for 90mph impacts is a joke. The guy would have been just as dead. Just less of a clean up challenge.

 

[Audiofn]

When I raced downhill skiing they would change the course some times on the second run. You just had to adapt. We raced a team one day that was all very small kids on the team. They set the course up illegally tight (the gates have to be so far apart) and I blew out my knee trying to make the turns. The total race was tossed but I got my blown out knee to deal with. In this case IMO the course was to fast, to hard, and they did not give the other teams a chance to practice and now a guy is to dead. That is not what the Olypics are about IMO.

 

[MarylandMark]

I didn't even know the Olympics started. I liked them better when the whole ball of wax was every 4 years.

Strapped some plywood along the track for them to bounce along if a wreak occurs would have most likely saved this mans life, at minimal cost.

 

[mosi]

The Whistler Sliding Center is acknowledged as the fastest in the world, although an FIL spokesman said on Friday there had been 2,500 runs with only a three percent crash rate.

Athletes had been remarking all week on the speed and technical difficulty of the 1,400 meter track, which features corners nicknamed 50-50 and Shiver.

But three-times Olympic champion Georg Hackl was quoted as saying on Saturday that a "tiny driving error" and not the speed of the track was to blame for Kumaritashvili's death.

"At 60 kph he would have been dead too," Hackl, the greatest luger of all time, told Berlin daily Tagesspiegel. "It's a challenge for all athletes to master that track and they have made it, including the Georgian until that tiny driving error."

 

[nortech4play]

The Luge is one of the Olympic events that I enjoy watching and it was very sad that the young Georgian lost his life.

There are a couple items that stand out, the first is the experience level of the participants and the other is the availability of other countries to adequately train on this course...

While some of the athlete's comments have not been the most politically correct they do point to an obvious issue with the lack of experience of some of the participants which on a very fast and technical course is just a recipe for disaster.

I agree with some of the comments that additional padding and boards should have been in place on very fast sections in order to protect the riders and it looks like that was accomplished after the fact.

The other item that seemed a little discerning was the Canadians severely restricted or limited other countries access to training at the facility to only a few training run. I'm not sure if this is a standard operating procedure for countries in the past but it doesn't look good in face of this unfortunate incident.

So much for the Olympic ideology which is supposed to be more about the total experience of the game than the medal count. It's obvious that medal counts and having the so called "home field" advantage was more important.

just my $.02

 

[Perlmudder]

I read in a news paper article that many of the people who have raced the track felt it was too fast. Although they said shortening it 200m has not made that much of a difference in top speed.

 

[MacGyver]

Looks the Winter Olympics is turning into the Spring Olympics. Temps in the 50's and rain is causing some Serious headaches for the Olympic athletes.

 

[MacGyver]

Weird that Texas gets like 9" of snow last week, but Vancouver (....Canada....brrrr....cold....snowy....)is trucking in snow for the games.

 

[drpete3]

Just say my boy Bode win a bronze!!!!

 

[ChiefApache]

Just say my boy Bode win a bronze!!!!

That was very cool along with the snowboarding!! That is messed up.

 

[redhotsommer]

The Olympic boardercross has nothin' on the X-Games. 7 or 8 guys at a time compared to 4. Check that out sometime. I absolutely LOVE watching it...and I'd love to try it as well...

IMO...take ALL the "judged events" out of the Games...faster, further, stronger...it should be man vs man (and woman vs woman) or a race against the clock. Period.

 

[Dominic]

The Olympic boardercross has nothin' on the X-Games. 7 or 8 guys at a time compared to 4. Check that out sometime. I absolutely LOVE watching it...and I'd love to try it as well...

IMO...take ALL the "judged events" out of the Games...faster, further, stronger...it should be man vs man (and woman vs woman) or a race against the clock. Period.

The start of this course would have been a mess with 8 boarders shoulder to shoulder!! i personaly think it was a pretty entertaining event on a tight course, except for the condition of the track that didnt help the riders. but I agree that the X-games are very entertaining too and they come around more often than winter olympics!

Finally, I enjoy some of the judged events... ski moguls, acrobatic skiing, even figure skating where there is some exceptional athletes that (i think) deserve their spot at the olympics. IMO, these guys and girls also push it faster, further, stronger... on some more "artistic" sports.!