Snowboard Course Will Change After Athletes Complain of Danger

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia - Four years after a luge athlete died on a training run in Vancouver on an Olympics course that had drawn widespread criticism, the Winter Games face another safety issue four days before the opening ceremony.

Officials scrambled Monday to make changes to the slopestyle course after a top snowboarder sustained serious injuries in a crash and several athletes raised concerns about the safety of the course, including one who said 'It's like jumping out of a building.'

'It looks pretty sketchy,' Roope Tonteri, a snowboarder from Finland, told reporters after a training session at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, where slopestyle will make its Olympics debut. 'I think they wanted to make big kickers and it's not really good for riders and it's not really safe anymore. I just don't want to get injured. It's not a really fun course to ride.'

Torstein Horgmo of Norway, a medal contender in a sport that features a long downhill course of obstacles followed by a series of large jumps, crashed on the rail portion of the course. A team official said he landed on his face and shoulder and was taken to a hospital for examination. 'He was conscious,' the team official, Thomas Harstad, said. 'It was definitely painful.'

Men's and women's snowboarders discussed the course's safety issues after Monday's three-hour training session and proposed changes to the sport's officials.

'The last jump has a lot of impact on it and the takeoff is really long,' said Charles Guldemond, an American snowboarder. 'Some of the guys and girls are intimidated. I felt like I was dropping out of the sky.'

Sebastien Toutant of Canada said, the big jump was like leaping from a building. 'I should put on my Canadian flying squirrel suit.'

Roberto Moresi, the assistant snowboard race director, said officials would modify the course to make it safer. The course designer, Anders Forsell, said the training session 'worked out fine.'

Four years ago, on the eve of the Vancouver Games, Nodar Kumaritashvili died in a luge crash -- the first athlete to die in Olympic training or competition since 1964. The accident compelled organizers for this month's Olympics to re-evaluate the design of their luge track.

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