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David Kumaritashvili, father of Nodar, pictured at his son's funeral in March 2010. Shakh Aivazov/AP
Winter Olympics

Georgia's fury at allegations Vancouver knew of deadly luge track

Georgian organisers are incensed that the organiser of the Winter Olympics knew how dangerous the luge track really was.

THE NATIONAL Olympic Committee of Georgia has reacted furiously to allegations that the organisers of last year’s Winter Olympics were aware of the potential dangers posed by the luge track, on which one of the country’s athletes was fatally injured.

Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, was killed when his luge hurled off the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre and struck an unpadded steel pillar, in a practice run just hours before the opening ceremony of the games.

An investigation by Canadian broadcaster CBC last week revealed that the Organising Committee had been contacted by the International Luge Federation as early as March 2009 – eleven months before Kumaritashvili was killed – warning that the track was “too fast, and someone could get badly hurt”.

The head of Georgia’s Olympic Committee Vahktang Gegelia slammed the revelation, describing it as a “huge scandal”, while the dead athlete’s father asked the IOC to explain why the competition had been allowed to continue if it had known the track was unsafe.

“Does it mean that my boy was condemned to death?”, David Kumaritashvili asked.

“We will closely study this television report, broadcast in Canada via CBS, and will demand an explanation from both sides, from the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee as well as the luge federation,” Bloomberg quotes Georgian Olympic spokesman Kakha Beridze as saying.

The CEO of the Vancouver Games, Irish emigrant John Furlong, said he had not been concerned about the safety of the track.

In his memoirs published last week, however, Furlong said the Kumaritashvili family was to receive a CA$150,000 (€117,000) insurance payout from the games organisers as a result of the death, which local coroners ruled to have been accidental and down to human error.

A video of the accident can be viewed here; we warn that some will find the video upsetting.