Expert: VANOC email exchange shouldn’t cause more problems
Posted February 7, 2011 12:49 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Emails warning Olympics organizers about the speed of the luge track a year before the death of a Georgian athlete shouldn’t cause VANOC any legal trouble, says a legal expert.
“It would have been a well known fact that this was a very fast track long before the Olympics. The International Luge Federation would have known that, as would all the individual federations of all the various countries,” says civil litigation lawyer Alan Hobkirk.
He adds if a lawsuit were to take place VANOC would be named as a defendant party and he would think insurance would fund a potential settlement. “So the fact that VANOC itself no longer exists and perhaps has no money wouldn’t necessarily be a factor.”
VANOC’s managing director says concerns over the Whistler Luge track had more to do with the 2014 games and not ours as was suggested in emails 11 months before a fatal crash.
Tim Gayda says the email exchange with the International Luge Federation was a message to the designer that it didn’t want the track to be any faster in Russia.
“VANOC was actually cc’d on it. We weren’t sure what to do so we followed up with the FIL, which is the Luge Federation, about other changes they’d like to see. They were to let us know, and the message we got back was ‘follow the same process that you’re following.'”
The father of the Georgian luger who died says VANOC’s failure to take action resulted in the death of his son, Nodar.
