Luge training resumed at the Whistler Sliding Centre track Saturday, one day after a Georgian slider died during a training run.
The sixth men's training session was supposed to resume at 8 a.m. PT after being cancelled Friday, but was pushed back until 9:02 a.m. so course officials could finish grooming the course. Each athlete will take two more training runs.
Competition begins at 5 p.m. with the first two runs. The remaining two runs take place Sunday.
Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old slider from Borjomi, Georgia, died Friday after he crashed in the final curve. He was travelling at nearly 140 km/h when he slammed into an unpadded steel support pole.
Course workers modified the last turn where Kumaritashvili crashed, erected a two-metre-high wooden wall to cover the exposed steel beams on the turn and scraped and shaped ice from the edges in the final turn.
Luge officials also announced that the men would start their runs from the women's start gate, which is further down the track. By adjusting the start, the men will not be able to reach their top speeds, which have topped 150 km/h this week, and the vertical drop won't be as severe.
Concerns about the lightning-fast course had been raised for months. The $105-million sliding centre, on the southeast face of Blackcomb Mountain, has been billed as a technically difficult wild ride. Kumaritashvili's crash happened at the track's fastest point.
The 1,450-metre course has 16 turns and drops steeply for 152 metres, the longest drop of any track in the world. The average grade is about 11 per cent, including two stomach-inverting drops of 20 per cent.
The International Luge Federation and Vancouver Olympic officials said Friday night their investigation showed that the crash was the result of human error and there was "no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track."
In a joint statement, they said Kumaritashvili was late coming out of the next-to-last turn and failed to compensate.
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