I work as a volunteer from time to time, helping out at winter sports competitions here, doing things like checking badges, etc. Yesterday was the final day of a three-day World Cup luge meet, and I got to be on top of the hill where the men sliders do their starts.
A luge sled is a little thing, two runners with strangely curved front ends, and a fiberglass pan on which the slider lays, on his back, feet forward and able to steer with pressure on the runner hoops, his or her upper back and head out the back off the sled.
Each country’s team has its sliders, its coaches, advisors, sponsors, and equipment techs. Here a tech has used compounds and rouges to polish the runners of a sled to a mirror finish. Since the races will be decided by maybe just one one-hundredth of a second, everything matters.
At the start, each athlete mounts his sled in the gate, grabs the fixed starter holds, listens for the whoop whistle indicating the track is clear, does a few quick back and forth pulls using the holds, then in a quick push-pull lunge, is off and sliding. The clock times the run to the thousandth of a second.
There are many turns on the track, all numbered, but everyone refers to them by their names. If you look close at this pic, you can see a luge rider whipping through the Whiteface turn, right adjacent the one sunscreen shade up in the middle. At about the half mile, he’ll be up on the Shady Corner curve, with a 30-foot high overcurved bank, experiencing some serious Gs as he goes through the 180.
The track is a mile long, and today’s times were all clustered around 54 seconds, with an Italian taking the prize by just a couple hundredth of a second quicker than number two.
On my way home, I snapped a pic of our ski hill, with one of our Olympic torches in the foreground. Downhill skiing begins next week, and I cannot make it at the start, because we are leaving town to visit family. It’ll be there when I get back, though.
Replies
How much snow do you have? Thinking of coming up at Christmas, but a little hesitant reserving rooms, etc. since there was no snow last year.
We have what you see in the pics, and it amounts to 8 or 9 inches at the middle elevations. But if it is cold enough, and it has been, Whiteface can make plenty of snow for skiing.
The best thing to do is to check the mountain's website, and see if you can get rooms that allow cancellations. The Whiteface Lodge might, as well as the Golden Arrow and Crowne Plaza. The Mirror Lake Inn might be stickier about it.
So I assume they have laid ice on the long track Gene?[email protected]
The family likes the Mirror Lake Inn, we really enjoyed it last year. We have reservations for February, but would rather have a snow vacation at X-mas too then a beach vacation.
It's a done deal, we will be up there over Christmas, hope your snow holds up.
Those pics make me envious. This will be the first time in over 10 years that I won't be skiing (wife's pregnant, 5 yo not intersted yet and 2 yo same thing). 10 years may not seem like a big deal but consider that all those years while living in GA. Used to do a lot of winter hiking/climbing too.
Gene,
If everything is so critical that they have to use compounds and rouges to polish the runners to mirror smoothness...
Why do they leave that sharp corner on the front of the metal runners ?
Seems to me that thing could do some serious gouging in the right circumstances.
They could have filled in, in front of it with fiberglass or something.
Or they could have ground it back at an angle...
Why do they leave that sharp corner on the front of the metal runners ?
I'm not familiar with the sport, but is there a chance that the sharp corner is a brake? Dude leans forward to engage it. Can't remember seeing how they slow down otherwise. Not sure I'd want to put my foot down if I'm going 60mph or better.
jt8
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." --Dave Barry
Good point. I hadn't thought of that.But I would also think they would get upset at the track getting gouged by those things.After all, if the difference between polished and unpolished runners is significant enough, wouldn't a gouge in the track be even more significant ?
A small, unexpected act of kindness, goes a long way.
Nice pics Gene, I love to do my snowshoe competitions there and XC ski there often recreational. Watching the athletes there get as anal about their "sleds" is like watching somebody tune a hand plane!
To all:
There is snow indeed and the mountains have been making it for a few days too. Nearly everything above 2000 ft is white. It is really hard to hand nail soffit (6d galvys) with frozen fingers OR gloves on!!!