For many, Olympic quests come to crashing end

TURIN -- A new use has emerged for the Olympic flag: Shielding the fractured bodies of world-class athletes as rescuers cart them to ambulances and Medivac choppers from their frozen fields of dreams.

Forget the X Games. The Turin Olympics have turned into the X-Ray Games amid a blitz of disabling injuries that has underscored the danger of elite competition in high-speed winter sports, taxed emergency medical teams, and raised concerns among lugers about the host committee's commitment to safety.

Just five days into the 20th Winter Olympiad, the casualty list reads like an international who's who of snow sports, with victims ranging from American skiers, lugers, and snowboarders, to a French downhill star, Czech aerial gold medalist, and Swiss champion ski jumper. The bell also tolled for 52-year-old Anne ''Grandma Luge" Abernathy of the Virgin Islands, whose bid to compete in her sixth Olympics ended when she broke her wrist on a training run.

''It's a terrible situation," US luge coach Fred Zimmy said yesterday, minutes before the doubles team of Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin wiped out at nearly 90 miles per hour, dashing their hopes of becoming the first American men to medal in three straight Olympics.

''Crashes are part of the sport," Zimmy said. ''You see them every day. But a lot of these injuries should not have happened."

While another US luger, Samantha Retrosi, recovered from a concussion, short-term memory loss, and lacerations on her chin and knee she suffered in a terrifying crash Monday, Grimmette and Martin received medical attention but escaped serious injury after their sled flipped and dragged them down the steep, twisting track in the Italian Alps.

A Ukranian doubles team was less fortunate. Minutes after the American spill, a sled bearing Oleg Zherebetskyy and Roman Yazvinskyy burst out of control, slammed into the upper wall and flipped, breaking apart as the athletes struck the ice. Yazvinskyy was rushed away with a head injury while Zherebetskyy watched, cradling his head in his hands.

The Ukranian men joined the ranks of luge victims that include Italy's top female slider as well as top female contenders from Ukraine and Czech Republic.

Zimmy blamed the accidents in part on the Torino Olympic Organizing Committee, which rejected a request by a coalition of national luge federations, including the United States, for additional training on the track before the Games. Zimmy said the request ''pretty much fell on deaf ears."

Lugers, who barrel through dangerous curves at breakneck speeds on courses designed with 30-story vertical drops, generally agree they perform better the more familiar they become with a track.

''The lack of training has been a major contributor to the injuries that have happened," Zimmy said.

Andres Cardenas, a spokesman for the organizing committee, said lugers were offered two weeks of training before the Games, double their training period for the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.

''They had the option to use the full two weeks," he said. ''Not all of them did."

Safety also became an issue in Alpine skiing after several spectacular crashes. The worst occurred during a women's downhill training session Monday, sending three skiers, including American Lindsey Kildow, to the emergency room. The 21-year-old Kildow, who entered the Games ranked second in the world in the downhill, careened off course, landing on her back, legs splayed, in the safety netting before she was airlifted 50 miles to Turin.

Soon, she had company. Canada's Allison Forsyth joined Kildow at the Turin trauma center after a frightening crash, while Carole Montillet-Carles of France, the defending downhill gold medalist, wound up in a medical center in Sestriere after a violent spill on the same course.

Carrie Sheinberg, a member of the 1994 US Olympic ski team and former three-time national champion, expressed surprise at the unusually high number of violent crashes. But she said Alpine skiing, in which racers can top 100 miles per hour, is fraught with danger.

''It occurred to me when I was watching the action in Athens [in 2004] that no one was going to die or get maimed in the Summer Games," she said. ''That's what the Winter Games are all about."

Forsyth was unable to return from a knee injury, which will require surgery. But, to the surprise of many, Kildow and Montillet-Carles competed yesterday in the downhill, though neither captured a medal. Kildow finished eighth, Montillet-Carles 28th.

''I was OK in the warmup, but I have a lot of pain in my back," Kildow said. ''My left butt cheek doesn't seem to work."

While surface conditions were considered a contributing factor in Monday's crashes, several Olympic officials and ski veterans suggested it might be necessary to determine whether safety standards have kept pace with the increased racing speeds made possible by state-of-the-art equipment.

''With technology advancing so fast, I wonder if some people are paying the price for that," Sheinberg said. ''Sometimes we see the casualties before we see the safety precautions taken."

For Jayson Hale, an American snowboardcross rider, the problem was a crash landing during a training session in which he tore a knee ligament. Snowboardcross, in which racers scramble in packs, is considered one of the most dangerous of the winter sports.

''Snowboardcross gives me a horrible feeling in my stomach," said Lindsey Jacobellis, who competes for the US women's team.

The 20-year-old Jacobellis, the world's top-ranked women's snowboardcrosser, hopes to be healthy enough when the competition begins tomorrow.

That's more than Abernathy can hope for. For Abernathy, the oldest woman to qualify for the Olympics, losing the chance to compete appeared more painful than her injury. She acknowledged while recounting the episode in her blog that her emotions were raw.

''Although I was immediately up and walking around, the Olympic medical crew insisted on strapping a collar on me and tying me onto a backboard, while I was standing," Abernathy said. ''They then proceeded to drop me."

She concluded, ''This is not the way I wanted to end my luge career."