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'How to throw away a gold medal' by Lindsey Jacobellis,

ohmy.gif

That was unbelievable! what a dork, she will rue that for a long time, the coach buried his face is hands, her mum started bawling and Frieden couldnt believe her luck.

and there I was thinking, here we go again, another American gold...

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Not seen the luge but it sounds interesting.

 

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We only ask because we have been observing that the luge has been rather incident-strewn this year. Six female lugers crashed and couldn't finish; two exited in ambulances. In the double luge (in which two people, usually men, lie on top of each other and launch themselves on to the track feet first, attaining more than 130kph), Roman Yazvinskyy, from Ukraine, suffered head injuries that necessitated airlifting him to Pinerola. There have been complaints that the design of the track itself is to blame. After she broke her wrist in training, Anne Abernethy, 52, from the US Virgin islands (otherwise known as Grandma Luge) said:"I love this track but something has to be done, otherwise someone is going to get seriously hurt." To which we are tempted to reply "Duh", but politely refrain.

 

The thing is, the luge is only one of the smorgasbord of opportunities to court death that is the winter Olympics. Which, we wonder, would get you closest?

On the phone from Sestriere, Dr Richard Budgett, chief medical officer for Team GB, pours cold water on - or would that be applies an ice compress to? - these overheated suppositions. Apparently it's near-impossible to calculate relative risks because the denominators - how many people compete, how often they go down runs - are so difficult to track, but statistically the most injurious of the sports "has to be skiing, really. So many more people do that." Life-threatening traumas, however, are rare. In the bobsleigh and skeleton, his direct responsibilities, what he sees most of is "overuse injuries - from bumping around on the bobsleigh and from training hard. And even if they crash they normally get away with it." As for the luge, "It's pretty unusual for things to be as bad as they've been in the last couple of days."

 

He does note there are ongoing arguments about how safe to make things, about whether by neutering all dangers you neuter the sports altogether. "Certainly one of the responsibilities of the doctors involved is just to make it as safe as we possibly can." Then he adds, dryly, "though we are limited by the fact that they're hurtling down a tube of ice."

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there is one bad bend at the end that caught them all, bend 17 to 18. They nicknamed it the devils bend.

The track is so fast which is the problem and that bend is really tight.

6 women crashed in the singles, but only one guy - an experienced Canadian who was really pushing it at the time of his crash.

perhaps there were too many inexperienced woman competing this year.

 

Doubles is a whole different story, is alot harder to control and its men only, I dont think they trust the female lugers enough -there would be a lot more crashes.

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What's the deal with the downhill skiing race (whatever it's called)? There's an English bloke who acquitted himself well by the looks of it, but no Japanese. Could it be a problem with European snow perhaps that prevents the Japanese taking part? Is this fair?

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Kjetil Andre Aamodt, with his easy to find name in the phone book won his 8th Olympic medal and fourth gold in the Super G, just squeezing out the herminator by 0.13.

Miller was nowhere to be seen again, as the world enjoyed a good dose of Schadenfreude watching the team that proclaimed they would scoop 8 medals in mens alpine skiing fizzle once more.

(just the one medal so far for 'the gonna win 8' team, a real bolter from the previously unheralded Ted Ligety)

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Toque:
Yah
Get rid of aerials and have skier half-pipe
Can see why you'd want that - the Kanuck men's aerialist forgot to do up his bindings - great routine, heck of a bad landing though - OUCH!! lol.gif
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Nice name there PillowHunter, but with the history of people being forced to change their names on this site, you might want to make sure no-one sees/hears of you eating it going off one or you might get changed to PillowBiter! lol.gif

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