All gas, no brakes: Luge and skeleton at the Games

As we near the midpoint of the Beijing Winter Olympics, nearly every event has begun. We've had the privilege of watching the figure skaters leap and pirouette across the ice. We've witnessed the ski jumpers and snowboarders flip and spin every which way through the frigid air. And we've seen the curlers slide their stones toward their targets with delicate precision.

Some of these events, like curling for example, and also perhaps the cross-country skiing events, are slower in pace. Others move quickly, like the downhill skiers zipping down the slopes and zigzagging their way to the finish line, or the speed skaters racing around the oval-shaped ice ribbon, bodies nearly horizontal like motorcycle racers riding parallel with the track around the sharp curves

But I don't believe that any event anywhere in non-motorized sports happens at quite the torrid pace of three other closely related Winter Games events: luge, skeleton and bobsleigh.

These three sports are played on a downhill-sloping ice track with raised walls; a tube of ice similar to a frozen waterslide. Lugers and skeleton racers ride on top of flat, metal and fiberglass sleds that speed smoothly down the track's icy surface, while bobsledders sit inside of a sleigh during their descent.

Because bobsleigh is the only event in this year's Games that is yet to commence, we'll save the tale of that sport for another day soon. Rest assured, it is full of fascinating subplots and stories.

But for today, let's focus on skeleton and luge.

These two sports seem quite similar at first glance, and that's not an incorrect assessment. But what would be off-base is to assume that they are one and the same, because that's far from the truth.

First, the similarities.

Both sports originated in the bucolic Alpine resort town of St Moritz, Switzerland, in the late 19th century. Visitors to the town, mainly from England, got their kicks by careening through the frozen streets of the village on makeshift sleds.

Local residents, wary of this dangerous behavior and after several incidences of collisions with pedestrians, complained, and in response, a track specifically for sledding was built to alleviate the problem and still allow for wintertime fun.

Years later, when St Moritz hosted the Winter Games in 1928 and again in 1948, skeleton was among the events included on the docket.

Sleds used in the two sports appear to be fairly similar, but there are some differences in specifications. However, both sleds are flat and low to the ground, allowing for riders to lie atop them and speed through the wintry courses.

Neither type of sled has any steering or braking mechanism, so riders must utilize subtle body shifts and muscle movements to guide the vehicles through the track at the optimal angles to shave precious fractions of a second off their final run times.

Luge and skeleton (as well as bobsleigh) can all take place on the same icy tube-like tracks. In this year's Winter Games, the Xiaohaituo Bobsleigh and Luge track in Beijing's Yanqing District is the host venue for each event.

Both sports operate as races, with the riders who cross the finish line in the shortest amount of time declared the winners. Because of the sheer speed involved in these races, run times are recorded to an extremely precise degree, sometimes even down to the thousandths of a second.

In fact, the gold and silver medalists' times in the men's luge singles event at the 2018 Winter Olympics were separated by a microscopic 0.026 seconds in total.

Let's now examine the differences between the two.

The first and most readily apparent distinction is the positioning of the riders' bodies on the sleds. Lugers lie flat on their backs with their feet in front, sliding down the race course much the way one descends a typical playground slide – albeit at a much quicker pace. Skeleton racers, however, lie prone on their stomachs on the sled, blazing down the track headfirst; a truly harrowing position to be in, especially when considering ...

The speed! At the Olympic level of skeleton racing, riders can eclipse 130 kilometers per hour during their blistering ride to the finish. And lest you think for a moment that lugers are any less courageous because they aren't literally diving down face-first, the supine position of the luge is actually slightly more aerodynamic than that of the skeleton, allowing lugers to travel at even greater velocities. Speeds of greater than 140 kilometers per hour are commonly reached during races, and the world record for luge speed was set in 2010 at a hair-raising 154 km/h.

Luge, the name of which comes from a French word for a small sled spoken in Swiss dialect, has been a continuous feature of the Winter Olympic Games for longer than skeleton, having been introduced in 1964 and included in each competition since. The German team has been completely dominant in the sport since its adoption by the Olympic Committee, winning a ridiculous 87 of the 153 total overall medals awarded since the 1964 Games, including half of the 12 medals in Beijing and all four golds.

Skeleton was axed from the Games after its two appearances at St Moritz but was brought back as a full-fledged event in 2002 and is being contested for the sixth consecutive Winter Olympics this year. Medals here are much more evenly distributed, with the UK being the only country to medal during each edition of the Games featuring the sport.

Unfortunately the luge has concluded at Beijing 2022, but the skeleton events will continue through Saturday. Be sure to catch these speed demons in action.

Don't blink!