Her debut was just bad luck:
‘Danica Patrick’s debut in NASCAR ended in a 12-car accident today at Daytona International Speedway. Patrick was running in the middle of the pack when several cars wrecked in front of her. She tried to duck low to avoid the spinning cars but was unable to dodge everything and slammed into the outside wall. She wasn’t injured.
“’It’s important to have realistic expectations,” Patrick said. “There’s going to be spikes in performance, I don’t doubt that. But there’s also going to be tough days. And today, I would say, was more of a tough day.” The other female driver in the race, Chrissy Wallace, crashed on the first lap and lashed out at a fellow driver for being too aggressive too early, notes the Daytona News-Journal. “Dumb mistake on his part,” she said.’ –AP
Meanwhile, the International Luge Federation and Vancouver Olympic officials said the death of Kumaritashvili was the result of human error:
‘…The International Luge Federation and Vancouver Olympic officials said the crash was the result of human error and that “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. “This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem, he eventually lost control of the sled.” Men lugers, who were scheduled to finish training yesterday morning, will get two extra practice runs today…’ –AP
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