David and Mari -father and sister of late Nodar Kumaritashvili sit in front of their home in Tbilisi, February 08, 2011 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Nodar Kumaritashvili(1988 - February 12, 2010) was a Georgian luger, who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.Justyna Mielnikiewicz
John Furlong is an honourable man.
And an honourable man must be haunted by this, must look at his own damning words in that e-mail - "An athlete gets badly injured or worse, I think the case could be made that we were warned and did nothing" - and think back to the moment the terrible call came on the day he had so long awaited, knowing exactly where the buck stopped.
Nodar Kumaritashvili had died after crashing during a training run on the luge track, and no matter what the spin, no matter what the qualifiers, we now know that this worst-case scenario had indeed crossed his mind - even if it was only to the point of wondering about legal liability.
We know that International Luge Federation president Josef Fendt suggested there were issues with the track, in a letter that prompted Furlong's e-mail a year before the Games began. We know there was talk among competitors during the lead-in to the Games questioning its safety, though luge administrators in the end declared the venue safe, which was good enough for VANOC.
It certainly appears that they were wrong.
The fatal crash may have been a terrible fluke, but the way Kumaritashvili flew off the track and struck a support beam, it is hard to see his dying as an act of God. All speed sports are dangerous, but all speed sports have been made far less dangerous than they once were - the newer the track, the safer it ought to be, and so Whistler's state-of-the-art facility should have been the safest of all. Even if an athlete makes a once-in-a-blue-moon error, there should be no circumstance under which the facility's design makes it more likely the athlete will be seriously injured, let alone killed.
As for the adjective routinely attached to Kumaritashvili since his death - "inexperienced" - one of the realities of Olympic competition is that because of the desire for inclusiveness, to give non-sports-power nations a piece of the action, some of those who compete in the Games are going to be far less talented than the best of the World Cup circuit, and some are indeed going to be relatively "inexperienced" (even with rules tightened up to prevent a repeat of Eddie [The Eagle]Edwards). If anything, an Olympic track should have been designed with that in mind.
Kumaritashvili was going too fast, or at least too fast for his own skills and abilities, and lost control. The night before, he had told his father over the phone that the track scared him.
But blaming him entirely for his own death represents a massive shirking of responsibility.
That's an uncomfortable truth, which, thanks to a CBC investigation (which prompted the leak of Furlong's e-mail by VANOC sources in an attempt at damage control), the country will be forced to confront once more.
The fact is, we - that is, we the media, we the Olympic rights holders and, to a large degree, we the public - didn't really want to do that a year ago.
Approaching the anniversary of what for Canadians was a watershed moment, not just in terms of sport but the larger culture, setting off the greatest mass display of patriotic fervour since the end of the Second World War, there is also the troubling realization that in our desire to get on with the party, to have our big Canadian moment, we wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible.
For all of the solemn words, and the acknowledgment during the opening ceremonies, Kumaritashvili's death would become the asterisk attached, the speed bump before things kicked into high gear, the unexpected obstacle overcome, the challenge for organizers to surmount.
The stories were written, the right questions were asked, the explanations challenged, the hands wrung. But then, the Olympics continued, a far more pleasing story unfolded, and by the time Sidney Crosby scored his golden goal, the cherry on top of Canada's sundae, Kumaritashvili was all but forgotten.
That is not simply a function of the massive corporate and media interests (including this newspaper, which was part of the Olympic media consortium), which had a vested interest in the Games' success, but also of human nature. Swept away by happy thoughts and good feelings and a sense of national community, there would be no dwelling on an unpleasant moment past, on the tragedy of an obscure athlete in an obscure sport from a faraway nation.
Nodar Kumaritashvili deserved better than that, from a whole lot of people. And he sure didn't deserve to die.