VANCOUVER, British Columbia — At the Two Parrots diner here Saturday, the televisions were all tuned to the 2010 Winter Olympics. A patron glanced up from his breakfast in time to see a skier in a head-over-heels crash.
He reacted in alarm: "Not another!" A customer at another table calmed him. "It's just a commercial," she said.
Georgian luger Norad Kumaritashvili's death during a practice run Friday has the Canadian hosts of the Winter Olympics on edge, and has put a spotlight on the dangers inherent to many Olympic sports in which athletes have never gone faster, jumped higher or pushed the laws of physics more.
The question now: In their pursuit of the Olympic motto of "swifter, higher, stronger," are winter-sports athletes, coaches and those who build competition venues crossing the lines of common sense and safety?
"This sort of a tragedy will obviously make everybody consider and scrub a little harder in terms of making sure we're doing the right things on behalf of the athletes," says Alan Ashley, the U.S. Olympic Committee's winter sports team leader and managing director of sport performance.
Kumaritashvili's death — which led officials to reduce the speeds in the men's luge by starting the racers lower on the track — was the latest and most tragic incident in recent months to underline the risks to athletes here. From short-track speedskater J.R. Celski gashing his leg in a crash at the U.S. Olympic trials to several Alpine skiers injuring themselves on icy slopes and U.S. snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffering a serious brain injury on the halfpipe during a December practice, this season has brought a series of reminders of the perilous nature of many ratings-grabbing winter events.
"We know in the back of our minds that injury is possible," says Celski, who rebounded from his career-threatening injury to win a bronze medal Saturday in the 1,500-meter race. "But injury is possible with anything you do in life, so I guess you just have to be confident in what you do."
His medal-winning effort proved his confidence is back, but Celski is skating now with a protective Kevlar bodysuit under his skin suit. He didn't have the bodysuit on during the U.S. Olympic trials because it slows him by a fraction of a second. In the 1,500-meter final Saturday, he placed third — and fellow American Apolo Ohno finished second — only after a pair of South Korean skaters vying for second and third wiped each other out and crashed into the ice rink's padded wall.
Athletes and officials contend that despite the push for ever higher speeds, bigger tricks and more thrills per television replay, winter sports are no more dangerous now than they have been. They say that because of better technology and improved safety measures, athletes actually are safer in many ways.
Bobsleds, for example, have been modified so that they're less of a hazard to the athletes riding in them when they crash, says Darrin Steele, CEO of USA Bobsled & Skeleton. One change involves rounder edges so the sleds are less likely to continue down the track at high speeds if they flip on their sides.
Snowboarder Shaun White says the higher walls of the Olympic halfpipe — at 22 feet, they are four feet higher than for the 2006 Games — give riders more lift and therefore more time to perform the more complicated tricks that have developed since.
White hit his head on the halfpipe during the recent Winter X Games while doing his latest, hardest trick, which requires him to execute two backflips and 3 rotations. Despite the crash being reminiscent of the one that felled Pearce, one of White's top rivals, White continued competing.
He landed the same trick that foiled him in practice to win X Games gold in Aspen, Colo.
"I'm a snowboarder, and I didn't want to give up," says White, who suffered cuts but no concussion. "I cracked my head pretty good. I was pretty dazed."
Also at the X Games, fans got a preview of how treacherous the Winter Olympics' newest sport, ski cross, can be. Four skiers race simultaneously over a course filled with banked turns, bumps and jumps. Intentional contact is prohibited, but the skiers inevitably bump each other, which can result in harrowing crashes.
Both of the USA's top ski-cross athletes, Daron Rahlves and Casey Puckett, were injured during the X Games competition and are tentative for the race at the Olympics on Sunday.
"We hate to see one of our great athletes get injured right before the Olympics," Ashley says. "But while it takes my breath away sometimes personally, I have to say I wouldn't expect anything less of them in terms of doing what they love."
A risk-taking personality seems to be part of the Winter Olympian DNA, with exceptions, perhaps, among the curlers and cross-country skiers.
"I've always loved going fast," says U.S. Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, who is favored to win multiple medals at this Games if she can recover in time from an injury suffered in a training crash. "I've never been afraid of it."
U.S. aerials skier Jeret Peterson, whose trademark "Hurricane" involves three flips and five twists, set a world record at a 2007 World Cup after crashing in training the same day, breaking a hand and injuring his nose.
"Most people," U.S. aerials coach Matt Christiansen says, "would have to stop jumping."
Even figure skating, especially pairs, carries a palatable element of danger.
U.S. Olympian Mark Ladwig collided with partner Amanda Evora at a 2004 practice after tossing her in the air for a triple twist. The incident left him with a fractured bone in his eye socket.
"Other than that, I've just lacerated my shin, I've stepped on my thumb, I've spiked my own calf — just your usual skating injuries," he says.
The first big news of the Vancouver Olympics involved an injury — specifically Vonn's bruised right shin, which she hurt Feb. 2. Vonn also injured her left arm in a December crash.
She fared better than some of her top competitors, including former World Cup overall champion Nicole Hosp of Austria and Swiss world championship medalist Lara Gut, who were sidelined for the season by injuries.
The rash of injuries brought complaints from some skiers, including Vonn, that aggressive course settings were creating unsafe conditions on race courses that are injected with water, which makes them icier but more consistent.
Ashley does not see the Alpine injuries as a cause for panic or a call for sweeping changes.
"There were a number of injuries, but I don't know if I would characterize it as unusual. I think that you go through periods where there's converging things — like in Alpine skiing, the course set, the conditions of the snow, the equipment — they've all got to be monitored," he says.
'Lessons' from luge accident
Kumaritashvili's death was the first in luge since 1975 but quickly has come to symbolize the ongoing safety debates surrounding some winter sports.
Coming into the Vancouver Games, the 2010 Olympic sliding track in Whistler was lauded as the world's fastest and one of the most technically challenging.
Kumaritashvili, a first-time Olympian who ranked 55th out of 62 athletes on the luge World Cup circuit last season, lost control near the finish line Friday. He was thrown into the air, off a wall that already had been raised 1 foot because of safety concerns, and hit an unpadded steel support at nearly 90 mph.
"There are some lessons to be learned here. Unfortunately, it took a death for people to realize there are changes that need to be made," says USA Luge executive director Ron Rossi, who suggests more training availability for less-experienced athletes and fines for track designers if speeds exceed a standard.
"We were told this track's maximum speeds would be in the mid-80s (mph)," Rossi says. "It comes in the mid-90s. The designer isn't held accountable. But we're dealing with a track that's 10 mph faster. Nobody in this sport has ever gone that fast."
An investigation in Kumaritashvili's accident by international luge officials, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Coroners Service of British Columbia determined that driver error caused it. A post-investigation statement said "the athlete came late off curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make (a) correct entrance into curve 16."
International Luge Federation officials reshaped the ice to direct sleds toward the center of the track, built a wooden wall to cover some steel supports and padded others. They also moved the start for the men's competition, which concluded Sunday, to the women's start three turns below to slow speeds by 5-6 mph. The women's competition, which begins today, will start between the fifth and sixth turns.
"I had no problem with the men's start," U.S. luger Chris Mazdzer says. "You need the training. That's what it comes down to. If you can get training on the track and work your way up slowly, we can handle the speeds."
Steele says the starting points for bobsled and skeleton, which also will be held on the Whistler track, will not be altered.
The combination of speed and tight curves makes the Whistler track difficult, Rossi says. Kumaritashvili had 25 training runs on it before his crash. U.S. lugers have had about 50.
Even a slider with at least 1,000 runs on various tracks would need up to 70 runs on a new one to feel comfortable, U.S. luger Bengt Walden says.
Once they are comfortable, speed is the No. 1 goal. Fastest to the bottom wins.
"The winter sports, most of them, they're about speed," Steele says. "So as the athletes get better and get faster, the speeds increase. And that's true whether or not you've got a track as fast as Whistler. We're always going to be pushing envelopes."
Contributing: Jeff Zillgitt, Andy Gardiner, David Leon Moore, Gary Mihoces and Sal Ruiba