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Originally Posted by FireFly
A couple things after reading a bunch in this thread and in the news...
First, they HAVE increased the height of the wall there for tomorrow's training. Kudos to them for getting it taken care of.
Second, it was athlete error that caused the crash. He overcompensated twice in a row. Should we make the entire track a tunnel to ensure that no one can ever fly over any edges in case they aren't as skilled as they should be before attempting to hurtle down an icy hill at 150KPH wearing tights and a helmet on a thing with skate blades? Come on people. There are two sports I would never do; skeleton and luge. Why? You have to be fvcking nuts to go down an icy hill at 150kph wearing tights and a helmet.
He was well past the exit of that turn before he went over the side. No one expects that. Yes it's a dangerous course. Yes it was probably designed backwards and has too few 'trim brake' areas. However, there have been hundreds of runs already completed on it and no one died prior. A person should know what their limitations are and if the track is outside of them, they should not race.
All that said it would be kinda cool if they moved the events to Calgary.
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Huh? There should be no point on the track where an athlete can fly over the edge without intending to do so or making massive errors. Overcompensating on turns in sliding sports is not a massive error. I have a friend who was on the Canadian national bobsled team, he did it plenty of times and he was an elite driver. You don't have to make anything a tunnel to do prevent that. Based on the fact that there is footage from the last 2 days of at least 2 other athletes crashing into the upper portions of that wall something like this should have been foreseeable.