Word: driver
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...during the summer, a top Italian luge team, Gerhard Plankensteiner and Oswald Haselrieder, live and work together as forest rangers in Cortina. They share hotel rooms on the road and put in long hours prepping for competition. "We're like married couples," says Todd Hays, the top U.S. bobsled driver, sharing a sentiment echoed by dozens of athletes in these sports. Some skaters, in fact, do get hitched...
...bobsled, tensions often mount between the driver and the "brakeman," who helps push the sled at the start and stop it at the end--there's no actual braking on the course. "If you don't care for that person and you win, it's kind of a double-edged sword," says the U.S.'s top woman bob driver, former brakeman Shauna Rohbock. Last season she dropped a partner she couldn't stomach. "You're winning, and then you're like, 'I don't want her to do well.' But she was on the sled." How inconvenient...
...Drivers swap brakemen like prom dates; soap opera surrounds the U.S. women's team like a Lake Placid cold front. Before the 2002 Olympics, driver Jill Bakken, the eventual gold-medal winner, jilted Rohbock, her partner of three years, for Vonetta Flowers. Jean Prahm dumped her best friend, Jen Davidson, for Gea Johnson. Now Prahm has picked Flowers, and after switching to the driver position, Rohbock is teamed with roommate Valerie Fleming. Bakken was back after a two-year hiatus but lost to Rohbock for one of two driver spots on the Olympic team. Got it? "There's so much...
Partner swapping is less common in luge, since it takes years to get in synch. The top driver steers the sled through treacherous curves with his legs while the bottom driver rolls his shoulders to complete the turn. The key to doubles luge, says Italian coach Marco Andreatta, is "understanding each other only through physically feeling the athlete and knowing how to manage the reaction. You have to feel the sensations and interpret them as best...
...West Is In Oil-rich Alberta is already a major driver of Canada's economy. With the ascent of a western-based Prime Minister, the region may now play a far larger role in driving national politics. The Harper government will be power-packed with influential Albertans, many of them (like the Prime Minister-designate) graduates or acolytes of the University of Calgary's libertarian political-science department. Westerners have been dreaming of such access for decades. "We're moving from the kids' table of Confederation to sit with the adults," gloats Western Standard publisher Levant...