MOSCOW — It is called a zorb, an outsize inflatable ball in which people strap themselves, then bounce down a ski slope and, presumably, have a good time doing so. But when a zorb veered off a ski run high in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains earlier this month, there was little anyone could do but watch as the two men inside careened along a jagged ridge and then plunged over a precipice.
The ball tumbled down the mountain at the Dombai ski resort for almost a mile, slamming into rocks as it picked up speed, rescue workers said on Wednesday in a televised statement. One of the men, Denis Burakov, 27, injured his spinal cord and died on the way to a hospital. The other, Vladimir Shcherbakov, 33, suffered a concussion and deep cuts to his arms and face.
The accident on Jan. 3, which a friend of the men filmed on a cellphone and then uploaded to the Internet on Tuesday, has generated concern over unlicensed attractions on Russia’s loosely regulated ski slopes.
The man who harnessed Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov into the zorb told the police that they were his first customers, and that he was not licensed to offer rides, having bought the ball two years ago for his own use. On Thursday the police arrested the man, Ravil Chekunov, 25, who said he had charged Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov about $10 for the ride.
Russia’s minister of emergency situations called Wednesday for tighter safety precautions at skiing facilities, after a rash of winter sports injuries. Russian television reported this week that 10 people had been seriously injured on a single ski slope in Kolomna, a city 50 miles southeast of Moscow. A woman who descended on a sled broke her spine after she ran into rocks at the bottom.
Russian leaders, notably President Vladimir V. Putin, have tried for years to build interest in downhill skiing in Russia. The country has invested billions of dollars in ski resorts in the Caucasus, and in particular in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, which will host the Winter Olympics in 2014.
Mr. Putin mingled with stunned vacationers at a resort near Sochi during the winter break, and the culture minister, Vladimir R. Medinsky, lavishly praised the local ski conditions on Twitter.
But an investigation into the accident at the Dombai ski resort, less than 100 miles east of Sochi, found 50 unlicensed attractions and guides operating on the mountain, the newspaper Izvestia reported.
A Moscow-based businessman, Montay Imanov, told Izvestia that the zorb that carried the two men was stolen from him at gunpoint in 2009, when he traveled to the region intending to open a zorbing business.
“They didn’t cordon the track off from the gorge,” he said. “It’s just a nightmare. They needed to put six rows of nets there.”
