Word: skeletonic
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...Grrrrraaaack! A horrible grinding sound came from the woods. I turned and saw an asylum escapee hurtling down an icy chute, face first, on what appeared to be a cafeteria tray. He was, in fact, a member of the village "toboggan" club, out for a ride on his "skeleton" sled. Three quick thoughts emerged: it's a bit early in the day for that, he's loonier than a luger, and we'll not see skeleton in the Olympics anytime soon...
...Well, it's a new millennium, and no doubt feeling heat from the X-Games generation, the International Olympic Committee has indeed invited the world's best skeleton riders. With a third ya-gotta-be-nuts sliding sport (along with bobsled and luge) now on the schedule, the slate of what Americans consider the Peripherals-nonmarquee sports that zoom into the sporting Zeitgeist every fourth year only to melt away in the post-Games thaw-is at an all-time high. At Salt Lake we'll have all kinds of sleds, cross-country races (some with guns!), ski jumps...
...olympic organizers looked at skeleton bobsleigh, so called because the first sleds were so rudimentary, and decided the sport was too dangerous. Sliding head first at up to 135 km/h on a tiny sled with no brakes and no steering down an ice track was just too crazy...
...taken 54 years for skeleton sliders to convince the authorities that it's no more risky than slithering feet first on a luge, leaping into the wide blue from a 90-m hill, or any of the other sports included in the Winter Olympics. And in these Games, women will be competing for the first time...
...looks a lot more dangerous than it really is," maintains Alex Coomber, the reigning women's World Cup champion. We'll take her word for it. A skeleton run begins with a 30-m sprint before the slider dives onto the 90-cm sled to hurtle around 15 steeply banked curves of the 1,500-m course. And without any mechanism for steering, sliders can control their descent only by shifting hips and shoulders. They risk losing precious 100ths of a second if they touch...