The Olympics: Too fast, too dangerous?

“How fast is too fast?” said Vicki Michaelis in USA Today. Ninety miles an hour, certainly, was too fast for Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, who was thrown from the Olympic luge track—the fastest ever built—at that speed last Friday during a training run, slamming into an unprotected metal pole. Kumaritashvili’s death was only “the latest and most tragic” in a series of nasty injuries in the run-up to the Vancouver Games. Short-track speed skater J.R. Celski gashed his leg open to the bone in a trial heat, several Alpine skiers wiped out and got hurt on icy slopes, and snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a serious brain injury while practicing for the halfpipe in December. In the quest for ratings and spectacle, has the Winter Olympics crossed “the lines of common sense and safety”?

We all share the blame here, said Ron Judd in The Seattle Times. The Olympics’ motto is “swifter, higher, stronger,” and “every Games has to outdo the others.” The hundreds of millions who watch on TV want to see athletes breaking records and engaging in “death-defying” exploits. But then we saw “the ‘death’ part of death-defying” graphically demonstrated last week. Afterward, Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg compared her fellow competitors to “crash-test dummies,’’ and said, “They are pushing it a little too much.’’ And the luge isn’t even the most dangerous sport at this year’s Games, said John Branch in The New York Times. That dubious distinction goes to the new events of ski cross and snowboard cross—full-speed, downhill demolition derbies featuring four competitors at a time. In previous competitions, wipeouts have knocked some participants unconscious, broken their legs and pelvises, and ripped up their shoulders, knees, and Achilles tendons. It may be exciting to watch, but with the stakes so high, is this truly sport?

I’m afraid it’s what sports have become, said Dejan Kovacevic in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In recent decades, athletes in every sport have grown larger, stronger, and faster, and the fans’ expectations have grown along with them. We truly expect world-class athletes to be supermen and superwomen. But as Kumaritashvili’s death demonstrated, our demand for eye-popping physical feats is starting to outstrip the human body’s capacity to withstand them. To avoid such tragedies in the future, “sports can and must be mindful of human limitations.”

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