Is inexperience to blame for Kumaritashvili’s death?

Certainly, it was a one-in-a-million chain of events.

Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili’s hit that final turn in just the wrong way. He had so much momentum going that it carried him off the track where the Georgian then struck a steel pole.

No one imagined something like that could happen. The death of Kumaritashvili was shocking.

In the wake of his terrible death, two aspects of the story have left me particularly stunned.

Olympic officials and even some of the people in the luge community blame the 21-year-old’s inexperience. In essence, those people believe if Kumaritashvili handled the turn better, we wouldn’t be talking about the dangers of the Whistler track this week.

I don’t know much about luge and I am certainly not a mathematician or physics expert, but it seems obvious to me that lugers going 90 miles per hour down a track with only a helmet to protect them spells danger even for a minute mistake. What would people be blaming this on if a more experienced luger died? If those sleds go that fast, momentum could fling any of them up and over the track, no matter how many luge competitions a person has under their belt.

If inexperience did cause the death of Kumaritashvili, why did the officials move the men’s start down to where the women start? Olympic officials said they did it to ease concerns of the athletes, but it seems many of the lugers did not agree with the changing the track.

And, it’s not as if this particular track hadn’t raised concerns among some of the athletes beforehand. Tragically, one of those lugers was Kumaritashvili himself, who voiced his concerns to his father days before he died. In my mind, inexperience might have been a factor, but cannot be completely to blame. If he’s an Olympian, whether for a powerhouse country or not, I would think he has enough experience to handle turns. His error did not seem out of the ordinary; it looked like something that could happen to any luger at any minute.

The second aspect that upset me was the decision by NBC to show Kumaritashvili’s death over and over. I kept looking at the ground every time the video would start; I couldn’t watch.

One thing I am at least somewhat knowledgeable on in this situation is journalism ethics. I have a degree in journalism and have been a newspaper writer for the last seven years.

When decisions arise such as these — to air or not air a video or a photo — it is tough to know what the right answer is. My local NBC Los Angeles affiliate aired the video to the point where Kumaritashvili lost control of the sled and then cut it off; I felt like that was the appropriate line.

You aren’t dealing with one of those spills we’ll see on a highlight reel one day that we can laugh about. Someone died. Would they show a video of a pedestrian getting hit by a car? Or someone getting shot and killed?

Whether people in the general public want to see the video or not, we just don’t need to see someone lose their life like that. I look at it as a matter of respect for the person who dies. You can’t think of ratings in this instance.

You have to think of respect.

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