Too Fast To Live

Too Young To Die

On Friday 2/12/10, the Vancouver Olympics had a fatality... Not just the agony of defeat... And it happened even before the flame was lit.

In a training run on the Olympic luge track, 21-year-old Georgian slider Nodar Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled, fatally crashing into an exposed support beam at 90mph. As the Olympic Village reels, the world asks if the winter Olympics are too dangerous?

The New York Times Olympics editor Jason Stallman says that last week's tragedy was the unfortunate but inevitable result of a decade's long trend in Winter Olympic sports.

Audio: PRI & WNYC's program The Takeaway, 2/15/10, Hosts: Todd Zwillich & Celeste Headlee.

"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1971)