BY LANI SEELINGER

On Friday afternoon, only hours before the Opening Ceremonies began, someone told me that one of the Georgian lugers had died on a practice run. Of course, the news was terribly sad. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to come so close to participating in the Olympics only to have everything end only hours before you were supposed to walk in behind someone carrying your country’s flag. Awful.

But I’m a little embarrassed to say that when I first heard the news, I figured it was a strange way of saying that an American luger from the state of Georgia had died. Still sad, no doubt, but there’s a big support system here, and back-up athletes. It only dawned on me that he was Georgian, from the country, when I saw his name. And this is coming from someone who thinks a lot more about Eastern Europe and Central Asia than most people!

To me, the fact that he came from Georgia makes it even sadder. Georgia is a country that sent less than 10 athletes to begin with, and you can imagine that their lives have been significantly more challenging than many other Olympians. When Nodar Kumaritashvili was born, his country was one of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Since then the country has gained its freedom, but there has been much political unrest, the government is not fully democratic in the sense that we take for granted, and the most attention the country has garnered on the world scene came from Russia’s invasion of it in 2008. There is still a Russian presence in Georgia, and the two countries are not, shall we say, pleased with each other. This is a different world we’re talking about.

You can bet that Nodar had to cross a lot of barriers to become an elite athlete in the sport of luge. It’s not like running or something, where he could just thrown on a pair of shoes and go. Imagine all the work he put into it. Imagine the 8-person team, imagine how close they must have been. There’s no way the whole US team could possibly have known each other — some of the most well-known athletes, the hockey players, hadn’t even arrived at the time of the opening ceremonies — but an 8-person team would be like a family. I know that NBC’s been trying to make you cry all weekend if you’ve been watching, but to me, leaving out almost any mention of the situation in the country itself was the wrong way to go about it. Georgia’s getting some more notice here, but I think we can all agree that they would rather not have it for this.