What is skeleton? it's like the luge -- but headfirst

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February 15, 2018 7:16 AM

By now, most sports fans are at least a little familiar with the luge: Sledders lying on their backs have been sliding down an icy course at the Olympics since 1964.

Skeleton is like luge, only the sledders are flipped on their stomachs and careen down the course headfirst. It’s like you remember from your local sledding hill, when school was closed for a snowstorm. But at 80 mph.

After cameos at the St. Moritz Olympics in 1928 and 1948, skeleton joined the games permanently in 2002.

The unusual name may have arisen because the early sleds reminded some of skeletons, or from a corruption of a Norwegian word for sled, “kjaelke.”

Although steering accurately around the turns is important — sliders control the sled with small movements of their heads and shoulders — a lot of success or failure comes down to the start. How fast can the sledders run 25 or so meters, and how efficiently can they convert that foot speed into speed on the course?

To help them grip the ice at the start, athletes’ shoes have as many as 300 tiny spikes on them.

“When you go right through a corner with 4 to 5 Gs of pressures, it’s instantaneous,” said Matt Antoine, a U.S. skeleton athlete. “People smack their faces on the ice. Concussions happen.”

One man — Martins Dukurs of Latvia, 33 — has dominated skeleton, winning every World Cup from 2010 to 2017. But he has found frustration at the Olympics. He was second as the favorite in both 2010 and 2014, and in both cases he lost to a slider with home-ice advantage, Jon Montgomery of Canada in Vancouver and Aleksandr Tretiakov of Russia in Sochi.

Tretiakov has lost his gold medal because of a doping violation, but Dukurs for now is still listed only as the silver medalist.

Latvia has never won a gold medal at the Winter Games. Dukurs is no doubt hoping to win the gold on the track in 2018. But once again a home country slider is in his way. Yun Sung-bin of South Korea has five World Cup wins in eight events this season, to Dukurs’ two.

For the women, the clear favorite is Jacqueline Lolling of Germany.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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