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Hang on to your skeleton
Hang on to your skeleton | ||
| Roland White tries the only Winter | [id:57161] the crowd, sometimes even | |
| Olympic sport in which Britain has a | injuring spectators. “The courses are | |
| chance of gold | much better now,” said Kirk, 21, an | |
| IT IS a sport so dangerous that for | amateur sprinter. | |
| more than 50 years it was banned from | “Of course, safety is relative. The | |
| the Olympics. Competitors race at up | main worry is the chin. If you take a | |
| to 90mph with their faces barely an | bend wrong your chin can hit the ice. | |
| inch from the ground. Even the name | I once ended up with severe | |
| is chilling — skeleton. And last week | concussion.” | |
| I made my racing debut. | And there’s more. Let’s not forget | |
| Skeleton is back at the Olympics | those terrible hand injuries. “If you’re | |
| for the first time in 54 years. It is | not careful you can crack your hands | |
| Britain’s best hope of a gold medal. If | on the ice and break your meta- | |
| Alexandra Coomber or Kristan Bromley | carpals²),” | |
| [id:57158], it will be all the more impressive | said Kirk. | |
| since there is not even a full-size | The good news is, however, that | |
| bobsleigh run in this country. The | skeleton doesn’t take too long to learn. | |
| closest we can manage is a newly | Alex Coomber, the current world | |
| opened mini-run at the University of | champion, took it up during a trip to | |
| Bath, which I found myself peering | Austria in 1997. Ten days after her first | |
| down recently. What I could see was a | run, she finished fifth in a World Cup | |
| track that dipped away sharply, then | event. It’s not yet a popular sport, you | |
| disappeared. In the middle distance | see. For some reason people don’t | |
| I could just make out where I would | seem all that keen to take part. | |
| eventually be stopping. If all went well, | Coomber, though, [id:57163] fears | |
| that is. | about safety. Before leaving for Salt | |
| I was supposed to throw myself flat | Lake City she insisted: “You can’t | |
| after a sprinting start onto what was | come off the track, you can’t be | |
| little more than a tea tray with ideas | trapped like you can under a | |
| above its station. In proper skeleton it | bobsleigh¹), and you’ve only got 4cm or | |
| would at least be an expensive tea tray | so to fall. You’re more likely to get | |
| weighing about 90lb and worth about | injured in rugby.” | |
| £2,000. For practice, [id:57159] , we make | So with those reassuring words | |
| do with a couple of bits of plywood | ringing in my ears, plus a couple of | |
| wrapped in masking tape and attached | short runs just to get the feel of my | |
| to a smallish trolley running on trails to | tray, it’s time to have a go. | |
| simulate conditions on the ice. | Have you ever tried to fling | |
| “You’ll be fine,” says my coach | yourself on top of a moving tea-tray? | |
| Greg Kirk, a sports student at Bath. | It’s a lot more difficult than it looks. My | |
| “Just remember to hang on tight. | coach is trackside shouting, reminding | |
| Really tight. As tight as you can.” As | me of the three rules of skeleton on | |
| words of reassurance go, these were | this practice track: “Keep your head | |
| not very [id:57160] . | up. Keep your legs up. Hold on tight.” | |
 | There is no need to remind me to | |
| hold on tight. By now I am | ||
| hurtling face-first down the track at | ||
| what feels like 50mph but is probably | ||
| 30mph at the very most and the end of | ||
| the track is rocketing towards me. You | ||
| just about have time to think something | ||
| along the lines of “Oh! Wow! Hey! This | ||
| is great!” before you realise that the | ||
| bungee rope — which acts as a brake | ||
| — is approaching. The tone then | ||
| changes to something more like | ||
| “Oowaah-oef” because you hit the | ||
| bungee rope at high speed and are | ||
| immediately [id:57165] . | ||
| Real skeleton riders will tackle a | ||
| Skeleton is one of the oldest of | 15-bend course that resembles a tube | |
| winter sports. It started in 1884. In | of ice and finish in just more than | |
| 1892 the wooden toboggans1) were | 50sec. Hundredths of a second matter | |
| replaced by a metal version, which | in this sport. | |
| some joker thought looked like a | Kirk has already won a novices’ | |
| skeleton. | championship in Germany. If he can | |
| As an Olympic sport, it was initially | find a sponsor, he hopes to be able to | |
| spectacular and not entirely safe. The | race at the next two Olympics. That’s if | |
| design of the courses meant | his metacarpals hold out. | |
| competitors would occasionally be | ||
| noot 1: a toboggan (regel 46), a bobsleigh (regel 82): different kinds of sleighs | ||
| noot 2: metacarpals: bones on the back of your hand | ||