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Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg spoke of feeling like a “lemming” and a “crash test dummy” on the Whistler luge track the night before the crash that killed Georgian Nodar Kumaritashvili.
Kumaritashvili lost control of his sled near the finish on Friday, going over the track wall and striking an unpadded steel pole.
Campbell-Pegg, competing in her second Winter Olympics, had joined a number of sliders in questioning the safety of the track which is considered the fastest in the world.
It followed a difficult night of training on Thursday where Campbell-Pegg nearly lost control and a series of incidents in the days before including a concussion sustained by a Romanian competitor.
“I think they are pushing it a little too much,” Campbell-Pegg said.
“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.”
Access to Campbell-Pegg was prevented by the Australian Olympic Committee after the fatality on Friday but the 27 year-old accepted the risks of a sport which sees competitors hurtle down an icy track at speeds approaching 150km/hr.
And she actually felt the Whistler track was safer than the one she competed on at the last Winter Olympics, which was also regarded as one of the most difficult ever made.
“This is our lives and this is what we do,” she said.
“Crashing is just part of it. This is actually a safer track than Torino and better organised too, I would say.”
Campbell-Pegg came into the 2006 Games as a rookie in the sport, having competed in just one World Cup event prior to the Winter Olympics.
And that was a horror show.
Competing in 2004 in Calgary she crashed on corner 10 and woke up five hours later in intensive care with severe head injuries and suspected spinal injuries.
She said of the incident: “I got back into it as soon as I could. It’s not in my personality to give up. It was never an option for me. It’s like what my coach said at my bedside in the hospital, what makes an athlete is not just having experience in racing, but also experience in crashing.”