Who’s to Blame for Olympic Luger’s Death?

This question was posed recently on Mahalo answers, and having read some articles and listened to some sports podcasts on this topic recently, I provided my opinion on the matter. The following graphs are that very opinion.

It’s likely less the Canadian officials’ fault and more the blame of the overall International Olympic Committee. This New York Times article does point out the fact that Canada did have this idea that their athletes would get a lot more opportunities to practice on the facilities before the Olympics, which seems ridiculous now. It turns out that Canadian athletes got hundreds of reps on the track, while the luger who died got only a couple dozen.

Also, on the sports podcast Hang Up and Listen from Slate, the hosts bring up the fact that the IOC has been trying to boost ratings for the Olympics by making the games more watchable (ie: faster and more dangerous). This is especially apparent in their decision to start including the “X-games style” events like Snowboarding, Snowboard Cross, Skii Cross, etc etc. – Something they said the Olympics were above in years past.

Ultimately an accident like this is truly no one’s fault, but we humans have to point fingers and place blame in order to find “closure”. It’s like when people started blaming video game violence and bullying for things like Columbine, even though the shooters were not really influenced by those things. (Read David Cullen’s book on that its amazing).

Anyway, the awful part is how the IOC basically blamed the luger for his own death, saying the track wasn’t to blame. Then they changed the track. Reports say the luger told his family he was terrified of this track. Luge is already fast, it doesn’t need to be faster to get higher ratings. Of course, the guy dying has likely boosted ratings for luge, which is terrible.

As Brian Williams said, “What a terrible price to pay to learnt he lesson of placing padding on metal support beams.” — Also why did NBC leave the video up on their site for so long? Sheesh.

Georgia’s President (pictured below) said this — “I don’t claim to know all the technical details,” he said. “But one thing I know for sure, that no sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death. No sports mistake is supposed to be fatal.”

I personally would vote for no one at fault, just a freak accident. But the IOC is as much to blame as Canadian officials if we choose to play that game.