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Luge vs skeleton vs bobsled6/16/2023 "If you get away from the sled, it's just like sliding down ice, only a little bit faster," he tells me. John Daly, at 24 the youngest athlete on this year's Olympic skeleton team, has only fallen off his sled once and says it wasn't a big deal when it happened. Skeleton Team member who is taking some time off from competition to recover from an injury, acknowledges the technical challenge the course presents yet reports that she has "not heard concern about the safety of the skeleton community" in Vancouver. So just how scary is skeleton? Not all racers agree that the sport, and the Whistler track in particular, is unsafe. Any error can cause injury." Melissa Hollingsworth, a Canadian skeleton athlete and a top competitor for the gold medal, has said in no uncertain terms that the course is "dangerous." "From curve one down to curve three, we drop so quickly so suddenly. "The Whistler track is super-fast due to its grade," racer Noelle Pikus-Pace, one of two American women to compete in this year's event, explained to CBS News. And while, following Kumaritashvili's death, the luge event was moved to safer, shortened courses, the skeleton (the finals are Friday night) and bobsled events continued on the original, full-length course at Vancouver's Whistler Sliding Center, home of the fastest track in the world. But what of the even less known, but seemingly more dangerous sport of skeleton, where competitors hurtle down ice chutes head-first?Īfter brief Olympic appearances in 19, the sport of skeleton wasn't reinstated until 2002's games in Salt Lake City. The tragic death of Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili cast a harsher spotlight on one of the more obscure Olympic events.
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