An Olympic luger died today following a horrific accident — flying off the track and crashing into a steel pole while traveling 90 mph during a training run hours before the official start of the Winter Games.
Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, who hailed from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, lost control of his sled near the finish this afternoon, tumbled over the track wall and struck an unpadded pole at the Whistler Sliding Center outside Vancouver.
Rescue workers ran to the crash site and performed chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was later air-lifted by chopper to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
PHOTOS: GEORGIAN LUGER CRASHES DURING PRACTICE
The International Olympic Committee announced his death this afternoon.
Kumaritashvili is the third athlete to die in training in Winter Olympic history. No Winter Olympic athlete has ever died during official competition.
The tragedy came just hours before the start of the Vancouver Games and tonight’s opening ceremonies.
IOC president Jacques Rogge called it a “very sad day. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) is in deep mourning. Here you have a young athlete who lost his life in pursuing his passion.”
“He had a dream to participate in the Olympic Games,” Rogge said. “He trained hard and he had this fatal accident. I have no words to say what we feel.”
Rogge, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes as he spoke to reporters, said he had been in contact with the family of Kumaritashvili and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
An investigation is already under way, he added.
In a video of the tragic crash, the luger can be seen slamming into the track wall on the final turn with his body immediately airborne, clearing the ice-coated concrete wall along the left side of the surface during the high-speed run.
“It’s a very rare situation,” said three-time Olympic gold medalist and current German coach Georg Hackl. “There’s some things that you can’t do anything about.”
The track is considered the world’s fastest with several competitors recently questioning its safety after more than a dozen Olympians crashed during training this week.
Kumaritashvili competed in five World Cup races this season, finishing 44th in the world standings.
Click below for video of the horrific crash (Warning: may be disturbing to some readers)
Earlier in the day, the gold-medal favorite, Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler, crashed after losing control of his sled.
Zoeggeler slipped off his sled and held it with his left arm to keep it from smashing atop his body. He slid on his back before coming to a stop and walking away.
A Romanian woman was briefly knocked unconscious and at least four Americans — Chris Mazdzer on Wednesday, Megan Sweeney on Thursday and both Tony Benshoof and Bengt Walden today in the same training session where Zoeggeler wiped out — have had trouble getting down the track.
“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Australia’s Hannah Campbell-Pegg told reporters Thursday after she nearly lost control in training.
“To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we’re crash-test dummies? I mean, this is our lives.”
Preparations for the first-ever Olympic luge competition in 1964 Innsbruck Games led to the death of Britain’s Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, who careened off the course on a practice run at the course in Igls, Austria. Three days later, Australian skier Ross Milne also died after hitting a tree during a test run.
With AP and AFP