But “high” is a relative term when it comes to winter sports. It stands to reason that the sports most likely to kill you already have high death tolls off the Olympic stage. They later redesigned the track with higher walls and padded beams, and it’s now meant to limit luging speeds to just about 87 miles per hour. The International Luge Federation’s final report concluded that it was an accident and that Kumaritashvili, a relatively young athlete, was partly to blame. Twenty-one-year-old Kumaritashvili, who was traveling over 89 miles per hour at the time of the accident, was no match for the support beam he slammed into. In 2010, Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian athlete from a dynasty of successful lugers, died when his sled was thrown off the track. The most notorious death in recent years took place in one of the Winter Games’ most hair-raising sports, luging. In 1964, both a luger and a downhill skier perished during practice runs, and after a Swiss speed skier crashed into a snow machine and died while preparing for a demonstration event, the sport never came back to the Olympics. But it’s not like no one has ever died in pursuit of Olympic gold. Luckily, there aren’t many actual deaths on record to help answer that question. Winter sports are notoriously tough on the joints, from skis and snowboards that can tweak legs to the tendon-shredding, cartilage-endangering feats of figure skaters.īut which sport is most likely to kill you? Now you're fully prepared to act like you know everything about these sports while watching the Games.Watch a few minutes of Winter Olympics and your knees or ankles might start hurting. A sluggish start or a mishandled turn could mean missing the podium. When dealing with this amount of force and speed, every second of an athlete’s run counts. All that changes is the woman inside the sled. In two sports where having the fastest time means win a gold medal, skeleton athletes clock speeds of 80 mph or higher, while lugers can travel up to 90 mph. So, there's no advantage to well-funded teams that can get the top-of-the-line sled. The most interesting part of this version is that the athletes use the same sled. Monobob has been added to the Games for women's competition. That is what casual viewers are familiar with, but there is a new wrinkle in 2022. Though, the fastest speed recorded was about 125 miles per hour. The average speed here is higher than the other two sports, sitting in the low 90s. To start the race, the two or four people on the team run alongside the sled and push it before jumping in. The athlete at the front of the sled is steering with ropes, and the person in the back is in charge of the brakes. The positioning inside the sled matters because there are different jobs in there. At the Olympics, the sport takes place in pairs or a group of four. In this sport, which may be the most recognizable of the three, athletes are sitting in a sled that is kind of shaped like a pill. It entered in 1964, 38 years after skeleton and 40 years after bobsleigh. Luge was the last of these three to get added to the Winter Olympics. Austrian racer Manuel Pfister set a record before the 2010 Olympics when he hit 96 miles per hour. Once they're going, the sled hits impressive speeds. They use their hands to push along the ground to get the sled going at the start of their run. Skeleton racers compete only as singles, and race on their stomachs. (Instead of hopping aboard for the start of the race in bobsled, like you remember from Cool Runnings.) To start the race, the rider rocks back and forth to launch themselves down the track. Lugers compete as singles or duos, and race on their backs. Racers angle their bodies to control the sled.Īnother key difference is that athletes start on the sled at the beginning of the run. Those handles aren't for steering either. Riders can grab the handles on the side, which seems like a poor replacement for brakes to me. Luge takes place in singles and doubles, with athletes lying on their back aboard a flat, brakeless sled.
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