2/13/2006: Bang! Crash! Pow!
It was a rough day in Torino. This is American Lindsey Kildow's spectacular crash on a downhill training run. She was knocked out and med-evac'd by helicopter to a nearby hospital. Unbelievably she only suffered a severely bruised right hip, and she became the hospital welcome wagon for the rest of the day.
Defending Olympic champ Carole Montillet-Carles of France also crashed on the downhill and ended up with rib & back trauma and a road-rash'd.. err.. snow-rash'd face. Remember these girls are flying down that hill at 70 mph plus - that's a nasty fall any way you look at it. Canadian Allison Forsyth and Austrian Elisabeth Georgl also went down today: Forsyth tore a knee ligament but Georgl skied down the rest of the hill after catching her breath.
Things were even worse on the luge track, where top racers reach 85 mph. American Samantha Retrosi ran into the wall on a turn, slipped under her sled, and appeared unconscious as she flew down several more turns before finally coming to a stop. She too was med-evac copter'd out to hospital where she was found to have a concussion. She has no recollection of her crash.
Sliders from Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Canada, Slovakia and Argentina also had crashes or near-misses in women's luge runs today but none were seriously hurt. Sadly, the inspiring 52-year-old "Grandma Luge" aka Anne Abernathy of US Virgin Islands didn't go down the track today: she had to withdraw due to breaking her wrist in a training run on Sunday.
Elsewhere, Melo Imai of Japan had a bad fall in women's snowboarding and lost consciousness several times before being copter'd out. Several speed skaters went down on both the long and short tracks, and North Korea's only pairs team had to withdraw from Monday's night's finals after a bad crash in an afternoon practice session.
China's top girl-throwing team Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao (not related) had a horrific crash attempting a first-ever quad throw in Monday night's pairs finals. She didn't finish her rotation, landed on her knee - ouch! - and slid into the boards. Their music stopped, they left center ice, and then in one of the moments that will be remembered most from these Olympics, they returned a few minutes later and completed their program beautifully. Incredibly, they finished in second place, behind Russia's Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin and ahead of teammates Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo.
Totmianina & Marinin's was the 12th consecutive Olympic pairs gold for Russia, quite an impressive record. They had overcome their own serious October '04 crash in which he stumbled while twirling her high overhead. She plunged headfirst onto the ice and was knocked out. She had a serious concussion and was off the ice for 2 months. He suffered worse: he felt guilty for dropping her and had a lot of trouble getting his confidence back. But she stuck with him, and after their music ended tonight and their choreographed bows were over, he thanked her for that in this spontaneous and very touching moment.
Such was the agony of defeat in Torino Monday, and the thrill of victory and near-victory. I wish speedy recoveries to all the injured athletes, and I hope we don't have more of the same in the days to come.
