Nodar Kumaritashvili

Nodar Kumaritashvili was a Georgian luger, who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition in Vancouver, Canada. Georgia is a sovereign state that is situated at the juncture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The country is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Nodar Kumaritashvili first began to compete in the sport of luge when he was 13 years old. He came from a family of seasoned lugers. In 2010, Nodar qualified for the men’s singles event at the 2010 Winter Olympics, which would be his Olympic debut. On February 12, 2010, he was killed in a crash during a training run at the Whistler Sliding Centre.
Kumaritashvili lost control in the final turn of the course and was thrown off his luge and over the sidewall of the track, striking an unprotected steel support pole. He was travelling at 143.6 km/h (89.2 mph) at the moment of impact. The luge course at Whistler is notoriously fast and, before the competition, Josef Fendt, president of the International Luge Federation (FIL), publicized his concerns about the Sliding Centre. Nodar Kumaritashvili was the fourth athlete to die during Winter Olympics preparations, after British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, Australian skier Ross Milne (both Innsbruck 1964), and Swiss speed skier Nicolas Bochatay (Albertville 1992). He was the sixth athlete to die in the long history of the Olympic Games. During the opening ceremony, a moment of silence was held to honor the young man’s memory, when both the Canadian and Olympic flags were lowered to half-staff.