Word: skeletonized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...refused to skate in the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany, became the patriarch of the nation's first family of three generations of Olympians. His son competed in three skiing events in 1964, and a month ago, his grandson earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic skeleton team, in which sledders go headfirst down...
...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...
...Take skeleton. It was a Mr. Cornish who decided to take the St. Moritz track headfirst during the 1887 tobogganing Grand National. So not only is skeleton not new, it is downright hallowed and has been in the Olympics before, most recently...
...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...