Sunday, February 14, 2010

THE WORST CASE BLAMING THE VICTIM SINCE HITLER ACCUSED POLAND OF "DRESSING REALLY SLUTTY": The death of Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili? According to the International Luge Federation's swift determination, it's all his own damn fault, with no responsibility ascribed to the track's ultra-fast design or the organizers' refusal to give international competitors a fair opportunity to practice on it.

[My side Olympics question: in all these X-Games events, how are we supposed to know which jumps and flips are the most impressive to judges? I was watching the women's freestyle moguls last night, and had no idea whether a "helicopter turn" is better than a backflip and whatnot. It all looks dangerous and ligament-destroying to me.]

14 comments:

  1. The Pathetic Earthling11:35 AM

    Do you know of a single international sports federation (or, really, any sports organization) that does not put the good of the organization ahead of the interest of the athletes it is supposed to be serving?

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  2. Myles McNutt11:38 AM

    In terms of Moguls, as far as I can tell it works like diving: if you perform simple tricks well, you'll get great scores, but if you perform more impressive tricks just as well you will score higher.

    Of course, I just answered your question about bizarre scoring in the Winter Olympics by referencing bizarre scoring in the Summer Olympics, but the presence of "Degree of Difficulty" in diving makes it more transparent.

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  3. Re: Moguls:  I think that's right.  At a couple of points, they mentioned difficulty of tricks.  [Our pink-haired skier had the same difficulty as the Canadian who took second.  Leaving me to wonder why the one beat the other.]  The American who fell trying to do a 720 (instead of a 360) did so because she needed additional difficulty points to try to make up for her lack of speed and turn quality in the upper part of the course.

    Re: Luge:  This is a time when Western-style litigation is a good thing.  I hope that the luger's parents find someone to sue in order to get the truth out there.

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  4. Okay, but what's the hierarchy of impressiveness?  In figure skating and diving, it's easier: triples are better than doubles, combinations better than single manuevers.  In this stuff, I'm lost. 

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  5. Maggie12:13 PM

    It seemed like tricks with twisting ("Helis") were treated as more difficult than the simple flips...  I wonder if the twisting motion slows you down more than a flip.  Regardless of the tricks, watching it made my knees ache.

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  6. Let's put it this way: I think Vince McMahon is more compassionate towards his athletes than what we're seeing here.

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  7. http://www.interschools.org.au/resources/site6/files/resources/2009%20Interschool%20Mogul%20Judging%20Guidelines.pdf

    That helped me understand...

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  8. gretchen12:47 PM

    I was rooting for the 35 year old skiier who had six knee surgeries -- and at the same time, thinking to myself that maybe the sixth knee surgery was a sign from the universe that it was time to stop competing in this sport!

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  9. Melissa R.12:56 PM

    It's ridiculous to have large, unpadded steel columns lining a course where folks are going 90 mph with nothing but a teeeeny tiiiiiny sled. Seriously? The idea of safety walls never crossed their mind? Seriously???  Even Nascar figured out that was necessary.  And I like that the Georgian President shot back that human error shouldn't be deadly.

    I was also reading that the Olympics doesn't want to seem elitist so there's a wide margin of skill range from the top to the bottom of the field.  And if that's the case, you have to make the track easier than some other competitions for safety.     

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  10. Why not return luge, bobsleigh and skeleton to the sports' origins?  Get rid of these manmade ice chutes and just put 'em all on the top of a mountain and see who makes it to the base first.

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  11. girard318:52 AM

    I can not defend the Luge Organizaton's comments, because when someone dies, the idea is to be respectful. However, it is extremely rare for a luger to become airborne (one luger said that was the first time he had seen it in 22 years with the sport) , so when designing the track, I'm sure they didn't think the steel posts would be a problem. Obviously, they were wrong.

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  12. isaac_spaceman11:51 AM

    I'm sorry to have seen it (and once I did, I didn't rewind), but it looked like he was unconscious before he went airborne, which kind of explains why, if not how, he went airborne.  Also, if it's a problem with the course itself -- too much speed with too steep a turn at the end -- that also would explain it.  You can't discount the unusual if you build a course in an unusual way.  

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  13. isaac_spaceman12:36 PM

    Scratch the first part of that -- just saw another photo, and clearly I was wrong.

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  14. Fred App10:30 AM

    It was the luger's fault, but then they went and made the ice slower, had the riders start lower down, padded the steel columns, shaved the corner, and raised the wall -- not because they thought it was safer, but to address the "emotions" of the riders. Yeah, right.

    When you're going 90 miles an hour, I'm not sure it matters whether the steel pole you hit is padded or not. From what I saw, the rider was high on the wall, and then came around the curve and hit the embankment at an unusual angle -- the corner of his luge was almost head-on into the wall. I'm sure it was rare for a rider to do that, but I think that when you design a track, you should prepare for the rare. There's no reason the walls shouldn't have been higher; that change alone might have saved his life.

    Meanwhile, I also read a comment from the a federation official that said the G forces were so intense that he probably had very little ability to control his sled. I don't see how both can be possible -- if the G forces prohibit you from controlling your sled, how can you be guilty of human error? Clearly, it's easy to scapegoat someone once they're dead.

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