***Winter Olympics Thread***
 

As I live in Vancouver...and we are hosting the world..let me say good luck to all the American athletes....I'll be cheering for Americans' Vonn and that red-headed snowboard dude...but Hockey...gotta be Canada. Enjoy!

Agree with you on the Canada Hockey!

I hope Canada vs Russia happens... :drool:

WILL THE KYRGYZ CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE BIATHLON IS THE IMPORTANT QUESTION.

The Winter Olympics kick some serious ass. I'll be glues to the set for ALL the skiing.

Love the WO but they always seem to ruin it with too much ice skating coverage. Last olympics they even wasted time showing practice skates.

Idiots.

My wife will be enthralled by every single minute of this crap, so it means I can play my video games in peace. :thumb:

already one fatality. (link has video)

http://deadspin.com/5470705/fatal-lu...rs-opening-day

Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old Georgian luger, died from head injuries suffered in a brutal crash in training today.

The CBC are the first to report that Kumaritashvili passed away, after a crash that looked unsurvivable. Going more than 90 mph toward the end of a training run this morning, he was launched from the track and slammed his head into a metal pole.

He was given mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions on the scene, to no avail. The track was closed and training canceled for the day. It remains to be seen how this will be handled at tonight's opening ceremonies.

The WO suck other than downhill skiing and speed skating.

Yeah, ice skating drives me nuts.

I'll resemble ChiTown's avatar while watching the hockey.
My pals and I already had our Olympics hockey pool. 9 rounds, I don't think I'll do so well - I have 3 Americans.

My money's on Sweden!

At least some of the women are hot.

Perhaps there should not be HUMONGOUS metal poles so close to a luge track. :shrug:

They'll need a lot less clothing to gain my interest.:evil:

women figure skaters have someone of the best bodies on the planet.

I wouldn't care if Dorothy Hamill was wearing a parka.

Hell, she's old as dirt now and still looks good.

NSFW
http://www.funny-games.biz/images/pi...ter-nipple.jpg

and they always wear the shortest skirts allowed in public (at least it seemed that way when I was 13).

I wanted to be a male figure skater for a large chunk of my puberty days.

That's a good start, now let's lose the bottoms......
:thumb:

Anna Semenovich, Russian figure skater

look her up.

No chit.

NICE!
http://img11.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp0..._122_562lo.jpg

I was so looking forward to watching these Olympics on my new beast and now after the luge accident I'm not even sure they should start the games this evening.

Luge is a really stupid sport, and dude who died apparently wasn't very good at it, he crashed before. So, not sure the Olympics should be stopped for an accident, this isn't like terrorists have taken a building, it's just a very sad accident.

The should have better safety features to keep these guys from literally flying off the track and hitting metal poles. That's a serious design flaw.

They shouldnt not start the games.

But they should definately postpone luge until they fix that monu-****in-mental problem of death poles.

I agree, they can't just wait to start the games. Too much money and logistics involved. But it will certainly be strange to see everyone jovial and celebrating the opening of the games knowing one of the participants died while participating.

I'm sure they will have their 30 second "moment of silence" so that in their minds they can forget all about it and not talk about it anymore.

By the way, luge starts tomorrow!

:shake:

dam..that's some awful looking video...:shake: I was hoping these games would be awesome throughout..but they haven't even started and already I'm bummed...RIP

Tough way to start the Olympics with a death in a training run...wow. Sucks for my country.

They went on with the show in Munich in '72 while Israeli athletes were being held hostage....so I doubt this will stop much of anything.

Except maybe the Luge, though....they need to make that track safer it seems to me.

I love the Winter Olympics but the skating coverage makes me want to go to NBC and go on a rampage. More events and less fluff!!!!

Holy shit that vid was crazy. Who the hell is gonna want to compete in Luge after that???

Nuts.
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Link to the video?

With any luck we'll see a slew of skating fatalities.

never mind. Found the link. Holy crap!!!! They better be putting up some sort of wall in front of those.

FINISH THEM!!!

I don't mind figure skating but the overwhelming coverage of it is just plain insane. Sure, show the competition but don't flood each and every night with it please.

On a more inspirational note...no one really has no idea who will light the big flame tonight (Gretzky has been mentioned)...but my bet is on Betty Fox...the mother of the late Terry Fox. If that name doesn't sound familiar...Terry Fox was the young guy who 30 years ago tried to run across Canada on one good leg and the other a prostetic...to raise money for cancer research...only to succumb his cancer halfway through the journey. He's a huge hero to all Canadians...and Terry Fox runs have taken place all over the world since his first historic run.

Seeing the video may be hard. A friend of mine told me CNN will not show it.

I saw it on www.ctvbc.com

LMAO

They showed the video on the CBS Evening News just now. It was pretty horrific but, thankfully, the pole actually blocked the view of his body/torso hitting the pole. But you do see his legs, as his body goes from around 88MPH to 0. The lugers have no equipment whatsoever aside from their helmet: body in a giant Spandex suit going 90 vs. metal pole, metal pole will win that always.

Yeah, maybe that pole should've been padded. But chances are it wouldn't have mattered much.

On the news, they pointed out how every year they try to make the tracks faster and faster. And apparently that track he died on is literally the fastest luge on the planet, and there had already been concerns for safety. There's now talk of moving the starting point further down the track, which would decrease their overall speed.

Wow, that video is awful. I'd read an article about it, but seeing it is 100x worse.

There had been a lot of talk about how dangerous that track is. In a training run, someone already broke the previous world speed record by 5 miles or something.

And that track design does look awful. Perhaps that's unavoidable, but couldn't they engineer around the killer turns to avoid having metal walls where people are most likely to crash?

Judging by how fast he was going, I'm not sure padding would have helped much at all.

There are ways to slow the course (heat up the ice, start further down) which would make it safer without canceling the event tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm not even close to a Luge expert, but reading some articles, apparently people have been complaining for a long time that the Whistler track in Canada is by far the most dangerous track in the world. You can apparently achieve rediculous speeds on the track that can send you dangerously high up the sides, but if your in a competition you cant really hold back or play it safe. If the track lets the best break 90 mph, then you have to try to match that speed to have any chance at a medal.

Some of it has to do with the sport only receiving coverage once every four years.

I know they're not overly similar, but look at the safety measures auto racing has done to try to limit injuries. If these sports received the same audience, I'm sure the track would look quite different. Whether that would have saved his life, who knows.

They just did.

This is the pinnacle of the sport. The track should be the most difficult on earth. Luge is dangerous - that's kind of in the contract.

They replayed the crash several times on NBC shortly after coverage began and even showed close-ups of medical folks performing CPR on a bloody face.
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Huffpo has a picture of him being tended to and his eyes are open. He looks dead but I read he died later at the hospital. The picture is unnecessary and not very respectful, IMO.

NBC has showed the video a few times now. Im actually surprised they did.

I wonder if they knew right away the extent of his injuries when they were playing it. I saw the story break on MSNBC and they said he had gravely critical injuries or something to that effect.

Sorry, I meant the 6:30 PM coverage - long after the Georgian passed away.
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Wow. So it's now part of the show? Sad.

They've been showing his death video on all the major news networks. It's a bit surprising to me.

Well, NBC had to address it, but they may have gone overboard.
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Lindsey Vonn is HOOOOOOOTT!!

I am amazed he survived long enough to make it to the hospital. Crazy...

I cant believe that the Georgian luger's moment of death is splashed all over the net, watched it at work :shake:.

Why, knowing that these guys sometimes come off the track, would you have big concrete pillars around the course? He was a victim of terrible design IMO.

You could just tell the way he hit that pillar... man, nothing but rag doll, almost didnt look real.

Craziest race Ohno has ever been in:
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Go to Sports Illustrated online. She was in the swimsuit issue and, online, there are around 45 pics of her. Tasty.

I tend to agree. I have no idea what kind of changes they can make in a hurry, but you'd think they have to do SOMETHING.

I'm not a medical expert but, as postulated earlier, I think the human body hitting anything, while decelerating from 90MPH to 0, with no protective padding... not sure it would've made a difference.

I don't think he 'survived', really. He was probably dead on the scene, but transfered to the hospital quickly where the doctors tried to revive him and then pronounced him dead. That's speculation from me, but not unusual.

Yeah, theres really no excuse for such a terrible design IMO, something like that should be wide open outside of the course & heavily padded in trouble spots.

To address what JD is saying, there shouldnt be anything for these guys to hit except open, padded ground. Not sure how you build it to include spectator seating doing that, but they're gonna have to do something better than this.

Yeah, I don't think adding 6" of padding over a steel bar is going to do much for someone going 90mph. My thinking is that it would be better to wall the whole thing off to at least keep people heading down the track if they lose control. You'd still be breaking bones, but hopefully not quite as severely.

Now for something more lighthearted...

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I think a simpler point needs to be addressed: what the f**k are they doing luging with no protective equipment anyway?!? Just a helmet, and nothing else but a skintight Spandex suit? Yeah, it allows them to go fast, but aren't they competing against each other? Make them wear some protective gear, fer crissakes, and just set a new benchmark of times. Sure, the times may rise from 28 seconds to 58 seconds (just pulling those numbers out of my ass, BTW) but who cares?

Me thinks I did not know 75% of the people in the new "We Are the World." :spock:

Uh, glass like they have around a hockey rink. You know the sport EVERYONE up there in CANADA plays :shake:

Agreed, he looks deceased in the picture I was talking about earlier. Sad. Invasion of his privacy, IMO.

Jesus Christ - I hope the last several posts were hyperbole.

People die at sporting events - bring on the puns.
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No way would glass withstand a 175 pound bullet going at 90 mph.

But I'm no structural engineer.

yea, no kidding....what were Jeff Bridges and Vince Vaughn doing in there???

Padding the numbers?

Oh god, everything is going to be in French.

I'm so glad the Georgian delegation decided to at least attend opening ceremonies. These athletes have worked much of their lives for this moment.

It's like the opening to Full House

Who is that singing O' Canada? She's damn good. I heard them say only 16? That's amazing really.

I'd venture she's some Canadian singer.

eh, its part of the olympics.

Officially, the olympics must be in 3 languages: English, French, and the language of the host nation. When its in a place like the US, UK, Canada, France, etc then we only have to deal with 2 languages.

English you can understand, but French? Why? Why not Spanish, or Chinese? :spock: