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OLYMPIC
GLORY COMES AT A DARK COST
By Doug Firby
Alberta Columnist / Senior Editor
Troy Media
Rarely has the culture of
hubris and the hypocrisy of greed writ so large as
on the tens of millions of screens tuned worldwide to the Vancouver Olympics.
Ready to supplicate at the
altars of pre-ordained athletic heroes and pay homage to the corporate
billions that determine our daily lives, you could almost taste the anger of
the high mucky-mucks as a young man from a little-known country and an
unpronounceable name turned the mega-circus on its ear and called its very
existence into question.
It speaks volumes that
had Nodar
Kumaritashvili not slammed himself at fatal speed
into a post at the end of a frantic luge run in
Vancouver, the vast majority of us would have never heard of him - or given much thought to the close
tie between Olympic glory and Olympic gore.
First Olympic luger to die
since 1964
As it happens, we will
remember Nodar Kumaritashvili,
but not for his athletic prowess. Instead, he becomes a dark footnote, a statistic in the record books the first luger
to die at the Olympics since 1964. He is an annoying piece of road kill on
the reckless road to fame that has become the Olympic fantasy, joining lesser
victims who devote their lives for a fleeting moment in the sun and the
aggrandizement of the Olympic establishment, then sink to faceless obscurity
and aimless lives.
Kumaritashvili is a poster boy for the Olympic meatgrinder.
Just 21, he was a proud young ambassador for the former Soviet state. His
presence alone in the luge event was a national honour, but, with a record that placed him 44th on the
world stage, he was not a medal contender. In fact, some commentators have
described him as an Olympic tourist ; one of those athletes just good enough
to qualify, but who really has no place sliding down a track that has scared
even the elite of the luge world.
In living sickening color
the world watched
The sickening footage of
the seconds leading up to his crash tell the tale: Kumaritashvili
is hitting speeds in excess of 140 kmh as he
careens through difficult slopes near the bottom of the run. In a split
second, he banks too high, overcorrects, and then is airborne on a trajectory
that lands him square into a steel post. Witnesses knew instantly there was
no chance he could survive that collision.
Thanks to YouTube, within
minutes anyone could watch the deadly moment over and over again. Despite
some commentators calling for removal of the grisly scene, TV executives saw
baksheesh in the bloodbath and we saw it in real time, slo
mo, stop action, backwards, and even in animation.
High-tech amphitheatre of
death
To the extent that he was
way over his head, Kumaritashvili s death is his
own fault. But much of the blame must lie at the foot of Olympic organizers,
who, in a quest to have the biggest and best, created a track with an
eye-popping vertical drop of 152 metres over its
1,352 metre length. With that slope, it sends
lugers to speeds approaching 154 k/h fully 10 km faster than any athlete in
the sport has travelled before. The designers have taken their cue from race
car driver Mario Andretti, who once uttered, If you feel like you re under control, you re just
not going fast enough. The athletes called themselves crash dummies.
Immediate modifications
were made to the track, even though Olympic officials contend it was safe
before. The wall where Kumaritashvili crashed into
the post was raised, and officials announced the men would begin racing from
the lower women s start in an effort to reduce the terminal speed. All the
same, Kumaritashvili s teammate, Levan Gureshidze and Ruben
Gonzalez from Argentina took a pass on Saturday s runs. Who can blame them?
Choking back crocodile
tears, Olympic officials offered their condolences, and maintained they had
considered cancelling the luge event after the
tragedy. We are heartbroken
beyond words, said Vanoc CEO John Furlong. Now on
with the games.
Nothing changes: It s all
about money
Does it come as any
surprise that they decided to go ahead? With a world-wide audience in the
billions and corporate sponsorships on the line, grief will always take a
back seat to greed. The modern Olympics have always been like that, claiming
to exist for higher purpose, and yet vulnerable to the same commercial and
political pressures that infect the pro-sport world.
And there’s the rub. Kumaritashvili was just a 21-year-old kid from a poor
country, stoked with the sense of infallibility that comes with his age, and
driven to take crazy risks by Olympic fever and the pay-off that would come
if he could just have that one life-changing run. This time, the dice just didn t roll his way.
It is up to the wise old
minds of the IOC to treat those eager young athletes in good faith, putting
safety ahead of spectacle. Instead, they have once again failed those young
people, allowing them to take stupid life risks in the fleeting pursuit of
glory.
Today, as the luge events continue on the very track where Kumaritashvili died, we watch with heavy hearts and
troubled souls. Because those who allow this spectacle to continue have blood
on their hands.
Doug Firby
is former editorial page editor of the Calgary Herald, and Alberta columnist
for Troy Media Corp.
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