Winter Olympics Thread

[DRiccio21]

wow did Spillane just choke

thats fucking disgusting

[buckeye76]

wow did Spillane just choke

thats fucking disgusting

no shit.....damn it!

[sixpackdan101]

Damn it Spillane...10 more yards and he had it!

[DRiccio21]

did he not see the other guy?

i almost feel like he was coasting like he thought he had it wrapped up and he kept looking over the left shoulder and the guy was passing him over his right shoulder

[sixpackdan101]

You might be right...and i would think if he did see the guy he might be able to eek out a little extra energy and finish first. Its for an olympic gold!

[Cnasty]

These Lugers are fucking insane.

Getting up to 90+mph on that thing?!?!

[Nole4real]

was thinking the same..balls knowing what happened to dude

[ICE]

On the 26th and 27th, the 4-Man bobsleds will get up close to 95 mph, I'm guessing.

[sixpackdan101]

they showed a helmet cam from one of those lugers...crazy!

[Cnasty]

On the 26th and 27th, the 4-Man bobsleds will get up close to 95 mph, I'm guessing.

Which is still insane, but sitting by yourself on a small little sled is just mind bottling.

[shel311]

My point was that NBC's coverage was putting him on the same playing field as Michael Phelps. Phelps broke records after records and Ohno has 2G's, 2S's and 2B's....not as impressive as Phelps is my point.

In my opinion, Ohno didn't get 1/10th of the coverage that Phelps did, lol.

[shel311]

On the 26th and 27th, the 4-Man bobsleds will get up close to 95 mph, I'm guessing.

Ice, can you just give me a quick rundown of what sort of control these lugers have and what they're doing?

From my completely naive perspective, it seems like they aren't doing a damn thing, just at the mercy of the course, LOL.

I know that's not true obviously, but I just don't really see what they're doing or how they steer or really do much of anything.

[trendon]

They actually do not steer that much because that just creates friction. What little steering they do is accomplished by either shifting their shoulders or using their legs on the curved part of the sled's blades in the front. Their main focus is to do as little as possible, which is harder than one would think. You know where I got this info from? A FUCKING DISCOVERY CHANNEL SHOW ON GRAVITATIONAL FORCE!!! Yep, these nuts participate in an event that creates enough G-force to get on the show about G-force.

I applaud these guys 100,000,000%

[ICE]

On the 26th and 27th, the 4-Man bobsleds will get up close to 95 mph, I'm guessing.

Ice, can you just give me a quick rundown of what sort of control these lugers have and what they're doing?

From my completely naive perspective, it seems like they aren't doing a damn thing, just at the mercy of the course, LOL.

I know that's not true obviously, but I just don't really see what they're doing or how they steer or really do much of anything.

Well Trendon is correct about them not steering on the way down due to the fact that it creates friction. Let me give you a quick run down of the sliding sport events and how they steer and other facts....

Luge: They start at a different start then the other two events do. The metal that touches the ice (lugers call them steels) has an edge similar to a hockey skate. The steels allow them to place the sled wherever they want the sled to go at any time.

Only the edge of the steels touch the ice on the way down the track and they are somewhat sharp.
The last time I knew, there were only 8 men in the United States that were qualified to go from the men's luge start in Park City. On these sleds the smallest movement is felt and thus the sled is moved. To steer right, you push your left leg on what is called the Kufen (German word), or the thing that curves up in the front. When you do this you warp the shape of the blade and you can then change your direction. For the more effective steers, you also push down your right shoulder to help you go right.

This is an empty sled. (side note: I was a tour guide at the track in Park City for 8 years and this is the sled from there and I have sat on and demonstrated this sled numerous times. In fact the more I look at that... that's my legs and feet!)
This event is the fastest of the three as they have very limited drag and also very little is touching the ice reducing drag. Because of this, it is by far the most dangerous.

Skeleton: This event shares the same starting point as the bobsled and they run and jump onto the sled. Was actually the first of the three and the other two came about due to modifications of the Skeleton sled. For this sport, the metal that touches the ice is known as the runners.

As you can see they are round. They have two grooves the back of them for control. The way in which they are mounted onto the sled is that they have a bow to them. The way in which these athletes steer as far less control then the other two sports. The athletes press there knees and shoulders in to the sled and this creates a small flex in the sled, thus changing the runners and steering down the track. They also shift their body weight and this is the way in which they steer. Skeleton is the easiest to get down the hill and the safest of the three. As insane as it looks, they are only three inches off the ice and yes their chins drag on the ice during the corners pressure points (explained below). The sleds weight 90-100 pounds and provide a very low center of gravity and are very tough to flip. If you do flip the sled, you are holding on to it and can easily flip it back over.

Bobsled: For this event they have 2-man and 4-man disciplines and for the different sleds, the runners have a different minimum radius to the runners. 4-man runners are longer and have a larger radius than 2-man runners.

This is a picture of 2-man runners. The reason for the radius minimum requirements are that the skinny they are the faster that they will go, so they have to be a minimum and there is no maximum. Fatter runners run better in warm conditions, and minimum runners run faster during cold conditions. If the ice is soft, as in warm conditions, the larger the runner the less it digs into the ice. And vice versa for the cold conditions. Steering for a bobsled is seen below...

For the steering you have two metal D shaped rings called D-Rings in your hands that are connected to ropes and you pull left to go left and right to go right. Older steering you have to steer more then some of the newer steering. My sled has a pulley system in the front and you only have to move your hands 1-6 inches to steer the sled, however everyone learns on the older sleds that you have to steer 6-12 inches to make them steer. In some of the corners you don't steer at all, but those corners are few and far between and the only track that I have slid down in which you do that is Calgary in curve 8 in a four man sled and 2 corners on the track in Koniggssee Germany that you don't steer in 2 or 4 man. The trip down the track it is nothing like the movie cool runnings when they are sitting in the bathtub leaning back and forth in the corners as the guys in the back sit totally still.

All the events: For all the events you are steering on the way down the track. The bigger turns are called double pressure corners. For a bobsled there is pressure at the beginning of the corner that attempts to take you to the lip at the top of the track due to centrifical force and the direction of your nose. At this point in time, you give a slight steering check to change the direction of the nose to go with the corner. Once you make this adjustment, the sled continues throughout the middle of the corner providing you pull back on the ropes (there are bungees in the front to help assist you know where neutral is). If you are late into the corner, the first check has to be much stronger than a normal steer as you will climb faster then other times. At the end of the corner, the pressure attempts to suck you back to the lip of the corner. At this point, you begin to apply bottom runner pressure and exit out of the corner. It depends on what type of corner and what corner is coming next of how you want your exit to be. You may want to come out early to get sucked over to a wall or come out late to maintain the straightaway. It may seem impossible, but you can tell what side of the wall you come out on and why you were there and how it sets you up for the next corner. A single pressure is a smaller corner and those have a pressure at the middle and you just have to guide the sled out. The best chance to steer a bobsled or skeleton is in the pressure points and that is usually the only place you steer. If you make the mistake of steering a straightaway you will give back time as you ping pong off the walls and skid down straightaways. Luge follows similar principles, however they want to be below the final pressure at the end of the corner. If you saw the Luge athlete hit the lip of the track in the first two runs, he didn't steer hard enough or soon enough as he came into the finish corner late and didn't make the correction he should have.

G-Force: These sports, your in 3g's, then 4, then 3, then back to 4 or again for short periods of time. We had an Air Force 4 star general come up to the track in Park City to take a ride and we were explaining the G-Force to him. He didn't care about it as he stated that he had reached 9 G's in a fighter jet. After the run we had to help him get his helmet off as his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't do it himself. Going down a track isn't something that you can explain to anyone until they experience it. You have to steer to combat the g-force or you will be rolled, but you at the mercy of the track of where you can and can't steer. For skeleton you hop on and ride down and steer a little on the way down. For 2-man and 4-man you have to steer at certain points to make it down safely. A 4-man is harder to get into trouble, but once you do it is almost impossible to get out of trouble as they react much slower then a 2-man does. For Luge the athlete needs to be still and relaxed to make sure they don't steer when they don't mean to and alter the sleds course drastically.

What happened in the Luge crash: From what I can tell from the film (which NEVER should have been shown btw), Nodar got into trouble in corner 13 (nicknamed the 50-50 corner due to the success rate of bobsledders in that corner) and he couldn't get back on the right lines. In corner 16 (the final corner), he steered the sled down before the final pressure and that made him go too high. At that point, panic set in and he brought the sled down to early in the corner where he hit the right hand wall. Since there was still part of the corner left, the force took him back up without his sled and since he was airborne he got sucked up and over the wall. I have seen someones legs come out of the track but never that much force to entirely lift him out of the track. This corner has 5-5.5 g forces in it, more then any other corner in the world. This is what made Nodar's mistake fatal. At least that is my opinion from what I saw.

Shel I know it's a long read, but I hope that that explains the sports a little bit better for you.

Here is a POV that I had on my sled when I was fore-running (going down first to check the ice conditions) during the World Cup in Park City in 07. You can see some of the dips in the pressures that I was talking about.

Found this youtube video with more information.

[ICE]

Another good video that explains the intricacies of bobsled a little better.

[shel311]

Badass Ice. I can't view the vids at work, but I'll definitely check em out this afternoon at home.

Like you said, it definitely "seems impossible" to steer if you've never done it before and have absolutely no clue of what they're actually doing out there.

It's just amazing at how fast they're flying. It's crazy if his crash was basically setup from a mistake 3 or 4 turns before and he just could never correct himself on it, but it makes sense considering how fast he was going.

It's crazy to see the different perspective you see it from.

In corner 16 (the final corner), he steered the sled down before the final pressure and that made him go too high.

Why do you suppose he did this? Rookie mistake? Or still trying to overcompensate from his screw up a few turns earlier? Or both?


Oh, and have you ever done the luge or skeleton? I'm assuming you have at least in practice, maybe not competitively.

[ICE]

It's crazy if his crash was basically setup from a mistake 3 or 4 turns before and he just could never correct himself on it, but it makes sense considering how fast he was going.

95% of the crashes you see in these sports, the mistake was made in a corner before the corner you actually crash in. Some people are better at compensating then others, however if you don't fixed it the mistakes compound on top of each other and then all of a sudden your over. Of the seven crashes I was involved in, the two in Calgary were rookie mistakes and it was my first ever 4-man race. I made the exit of seven too short and came into curve 8 too late and corrected it too hard, got sucked up at the end and was on my head at the exit. My crash in Park City, I came out of curve 12 too hard and came in really late into curve 13, since I was so late the pressure actually rolled the sled into the corner, but flipped us back upright on the exit and we finished the run. Some of the guys in the sled weren't even sure that we had crashed at the end. I have crashed 3 times in Lake Placid. The first one was during a commercial shoot for Verizon and the track, as I told them, wasn't ready for a 4-man yet that year due to the fact that the ice was not shaped properly at the beginning of curve 8 and it pushed me away at the entrance so I went in late and crashed in the small corner. The two other crashes on the track were in curve 18 which is really tough to begin with and I came off of 17 too early and never got height on 18 until the end when it was too late to do anything and I was over and face first into 19. My biggest crash was in St. Moritz, Switzerland and there my steering froze over night and I had no steering at all. St. Moritz is one of the coldest places around and our sled had to sit outside due to the fact that I wasn't old enough to get a rental truck at the time. We should have checked it, but were in a hurry and didn't.

Why do you suppose he did this? Rookie mistake? Or still trying to overcompensate from his screw up a few turns earlier? Or both?

I honestly think that the speed is why he did this. On a slow ice day, compared to a fast ice day, your speeds can change as much as 5-10 mph and you can really feel the difference. This was a blazing fast ice day and I honestly don't think that he was ready for this type of speed. Judging from the crashes that you saw, most people weren't ready for this type of speed. The track in Winterburg Germany sleds will reach 65-70 mph, track in Lake Placid and Park City sleds will reach low to mid 80's, most other tracks will reach speeds 70-80 mph and the fastest sled was in St. Moritz were they reached 90 in a 4-man (Luge doesn't compete on this track in Switzerland). This speed adjustment for these athletes is no joke when you combine that with the shape of the corners that these athletes are attempting to maneuver. I also read that the shape of the corner wasn't very conducive to allowing for an easy entrance. Once you get in trouble you need all the help you can and the shape didn't help him in the least. I think speed, the shape of the corner and his experience level in the sport are the reasons (in order) why this happened.

Oh, and have you ever done the luge or skeleton? I'm assuming you have at least in practice, maybe not competitively.
On this track it is very technical and very fast so those mistakes are compounded

I have tried the skeleton in the Ice House in Calgary. Which is a year round indoor ice push track training facility.

This is the bobsled and skeleton push track in the ice house (without ice). Some bobsledders learn Skeleton first so they can understand the ice and the tracks, however my shoulders are wider then a skeleton sled, so if I were to go down on one and hit the walls, my shoulders would hit the walls. Not something that I am interested in doing. Although I would be willing to try it from a lower start. Luge is so technical and difficult to learn, I have never even tried. When I first got into the sport, I wanted to Luge, but I'm much too big to be riding one of those. The national governing bodies for bobsled and skeleton are the same and Luge is different. When I was sliding, we really didn't get along, Luge was winning medals and we weren't and they let us know about it as well. So there was some tensions between the groups, now I think there is less tension, but there always will be when you have to share the track with someone else.

[Cnasty]

Thats some crazy stuff Ice.

I forgot, but you competed in the Olympics?? What was your best finish?

The bobsled is no joke either, but this was my first time watching the luge for an extended period of time and it is one of the ballsiest sports I have ever seen.

95mph, on ice, on a little sled by yourself with no outer protection is just utterly insane. I actually saw the video for the first time this weekend and it was brutal.

Awesome to have your inside take on this stuff.

[ICE]

Thats some crazy stuff Ice.

I forgot, but you competed in the Olympics?? What was your best finish?

I never made the Olympic team. I was on the national team from 98-02 and then raced two more races in 05. I was in the Olympic trials in 02 and was the youngest driver by over 10 years. My goal was always 06 and 10, maybe more. However, my crash in St. Moritz on 2/4/02 left me with a TBI (traumatic brain injury) and was told that I had 72 hours to live and that if I did survive, I'd never be the same. They also said that I'd never bobsled again. I have recovered about 99% and had to go through all kinds of testing and meet with all kinds of doctors to get cleared to slide again. This process took over 2 years. People moved ahead of me and equipment, that was promised to me after the 02 games, was given out to Steve Holcomb who is now USA 1. So my window was closed. I won the America's Cup (a minor league circuit) overall title in 00-01 and then again in 01-02. I consistently beat the smaller nations that got to race in the Olympics, but since I was on the US team I was 5th in the Olympic trials and they took the top 2. I did race in one World Cup race in Lake Placid and came in 25th in 01. I would love to get back into it, but sleds cost 35k and now that I have a wife, a son and another on the way, it is almost impossible to try and do anymore. Although this time of year is really hard on me.

95mph, on ice, on a little sled by yourself with no outer protection is just utterly insane. I actually saw the video for the first time this weekend and it was brutal.

That video should have NEVER been shown. I think about that a lot and those pictures of a man dying should have never been shown and I'm appalled at NBC for releasing the footage.

[jsence2]

I agree with ICE, that guy's death should never have been shown. It was truly sad and horrifying to watch.

Thanks for all the info man, explains a lot!