The British media have recently been criticizing Canada as being poor Olympic hosts. The main focus of the criticism is on the tragic death of 21 year old Georgian luger- Nodar Kumaritashvili. Nodar was killed in a training run on Friday, February 12, 2009. He lost control after turning corner # 16, fell and crashed into a metal pole. People have begun blaming the track setup for being too fast and dangerous. In response, the Olympic committee lowered the start level to the women's start point and made a new safety wall on turn #16. The British media now have started to criticize Canada for being poor hosts for the games. The media have made some very harsh remarks about Canada regarding the tragedy and the games itself. "Canada wanted to own the podium, this morning they can out their maple leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible" wrote Martin Samuel of the Daily Mail. Samuel has also accused Canada of cheating, stating that Canadian luge competitors practiced more than 300 times on the track while other countries' athletes had much less. Also, the media has been saying that Canada's desire to reach the podium is so high that they used the hometown track to their advantage, by limiting the use of the track to other countries prior to the Olympics.
I believe that the British press is unfairly criticizing Canada. The death of the luger was his own fault and blaming the Canadians for not allowing enough time to train is just not fair. The death was a total accident, it is something that is almost unheard of. Other lugers have even defended the committee by saying that they would have preferred the higher starting point, and that they like having more of a challenging course. Also, coaches and the luging community have come forward to say that the death was due to the lack of experience of Nodar. After the changes to the track there have been no crashes, or injuries substained to the competitors. After all of the negative comments let's see how perfect England willo be at hosting the Oylmpics in 2012.
I feel that part of this accident was canada's fault. some of the athletes had complained about the track being to fast and canada did nothing about it. i think that canada is partly at fault for this accident and that britan has a right to be blaming canada for this tragedy.
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