Watching the Crash Video

 With the announcement of the final report of the FIL to the IOC about Nodar's death coming on Monday the 12th of April.  I felt compelled to finally watch the crash video and see for myself what actually happened.  Thus far I have been able to avoid it.  I have seen and been in a few horrible crashes in my luge experience.  They are hard to watch. 

My worst crash was in Igls, Austria.  The only other luge course to take a life.  I crashed in curve 10.  A curve that is nearly two stories tall.  I hit the "woods"  the wooden barrier that is supposed to throw you back down to the ice and keep you in the track.  It did its job and the impact broke my wrist, dislocated my hip, crushed nerves in my knee and ankle and gave me one hell of a concussion.  But, I lived. 

After my first impact of hitting the woods I remembered a story about a yogi who was hated by the local men in his town.  One day they kidnapped him, tied him up and threw him into the Ganges River.  Where he was from, the river was rapid and rocky and had huge waterfalls.  The men meant to kill him.  But, he said he stayed relaxed and had faith that everything was going to be OK and he was. So, I was determined to do the same thing.  I relaxed my body and absorbed the second impact of being thrown down onto the ice, a fall of nearly 25 feet at 60 - 70 miles per hour.  I just kept chanting to myself that everything would be OK, over and over again.  I was hauled away in an Ambulance but, managed to walk out of the emergency room and go back to my hotel.  I wish it would have been the same for Nodar.

Here is what I could see from the crash footage, with the shades up there are gaps in what the cameras can see . . . he had a good aggressive start, he was not holding back in any way, 4 paddles and then laid down (we call that "settle"), he laid back all the way with his head back to check his form - again aggressive and pushing himself, it shows confidence.  I don't see any major problems until I hear his feet down, it's a tell tale sign something is wrong, we NEVER put our feet down - unless we are already out of control, as he enters the curve - he shot straight to the top of it - gravity dictates your life at this point - where there is more G force it pushes you up - he must have missed the steer at the entrance of the curve - I don't know how he got there because of the shades but, just seeing that I know the only place he can go is straight down, he might have even already hit the wooden barrier at the top of the curve - it's supposed to throw you down into the curve and keep you in the track the problem is that this curve has another pressure point (a point of greater then 1G) when he got to it it pushed him straight up the profile of the curve again and I think he must have hit the wooden barrier there because he was on his side and off of the sled a bit. He hit the "short" wall - we only call it that because it is in the belly of the curve - and the force propelled him into the air. I put my hand over the screen after that and the sound of him hitting the post has tears running down my face. It was lighting fast, mercifully fast, he never knew.