Vancouver (pps) The family of the fatally injured Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili will receive a death benefit from a private insurance policy provided by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games VANOC. This was reported by the daily newspaper „Vancouver Sun“. According to this report VANOC had upgraded the insurance policy, designed for no-cost health insurance for all Olympians, to include accidental death.

Furthermore VANOC intends to make a contribution to the donation campaign launched by the International Luge Federation (FIL) in support of Nodar Kumaritashvili’s family. „We want to do so in a thoughtful and appropriate way so we'll complete our work of staging the Paralympics and then finalize our intentions on this“, the newspaper quotes VANOC spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade. The FIL had already wired a sum of 10,000 Euros as immediate support to the family. This is intended to help the family reconstruct their house destroyed in a fire a few years ago.

21 year-old Georgian, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was killed during a training run at Whistler Sliding Center on the opening day of the Olympic Winter Games.