That track is crazy, I can't believe how fast they are traveling

RIP very sad.

 

On the other hand it's also basically unheard of for a luge crash to result in the person flying entirely out of the track.

And even then, at 100mph do you think pads on a metal pole are going to make a difference?

 

Depends on the pads. A triple or quadruple layer of gymnastic pads with a medium-weight foam inner core would hugely improve the situation as they significantly delay the time from contact to actual full stop.

 

very hard to watch knowing what happened

 

With those speeds and just a helmet for protection I'm surprised there aren't more fatal luge crashes.

 

I don't know about preventable.
if he hadn't hit the pole, he'd have hit something else at 91mph.
even with seatbelt and airbag, hitting something solid at that speed in a car would have resulted in serious injury. Hitting that wearing a skin suit would not be much better, padded pole or not.

 

/nod


Actually just as I clicked on this thread, nbc came on announcing the death. Very sad

 

^ Yes at least NBC told the story with dignity and I give them credit for showing the video. The IOC must now realize they cannot cover it up.

Again RIP!

 

at those speeds, even a padded pole would probably have killed him. The padding might have absorbed some of the force, but you internal organs would still go splat against your rib cage from the abrupt stop.

 

The only thing they can do to improve the safety there is to build up the height of the walls or add safety netting, allowing a competitor if they get out of control to hopefully slide off the wall and down the track where their inertia will get slowed so they can glide to a safer stop.

That track is nasty, if you saw the NBC footage their are a lot of seasoned competitors running into trouble on that track. The defending 2 time gold medalist in luge himself had a crash in a training run. Its built for speed and we all know speed is deadly.