Word: sleds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...last week's International Diamond Trophy races, sub-zero temperatures had turned the Mount Van Hoevenberg course so hard and slick that the sleds' runners would not bite into the ice, tended to slip sideways on the turns. Conditions were particularly bad at the 13th and 14th turns-known as the Zig-Zag -where a wooden superstructure was installed to keep the careening sleds from shooting right over the banking. As the four-man competition got under way, a U.S. sled overturned at the Zig-Zag, injuring two of the crew. At that, the wife of the next...
...Zardini's luck ended. Plummeting into the turn at 80 m.p.h., his sled literally took off, hurling its occupants headfirst into the protective superstructure and spilling them out onto the track. The empty sled rattled on across the finish line while rescuers rushed to its crew. One had a concussion and a broken cheekbone, another was badly bruised, a third was unhurt. Driver Zardini was dead, his head crushed by the wooden safety rail...
...most exacting sports. The trick is to stay just short of disaster, taking the steeply banked turns as high as possible (so as to pick up speed on the way down), threading an absolutely straight course through the narrow straightaways, where a momentary miscalculation will slam the sled into a solid wall...
...brakes ("They are only good for stopping at the end") or a steering wheel (he preferred to use reins, like a jockey), told his crewmen to "sit quiet and close your eyes if you want." He won six two-man world championships, plus two world titles in four-man sleds. The streak came to an end at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, when Britain's Tony Nash won the two-man race in a damaged sled that Monti had helped repair. Monti decided to retire to his ski lifts at Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites...
...twelve curves) Ronco run as the site for last week's 1966 championships. Monti could not bear the thought of standing around as a spectator while Nash or somebody else won the race on his own home course. Besides, Brakeman Sergio Siorpaes had designed a faster, more maneuverable sled with motorcycle shock absorbers and a central pivot that permitted both sets of runners to bank independently on curves. "I have never felt more like racing," said Monti after testing the sled. Even a crash failed to dampen his enthusiasm: during practice last month, he was clattering through Cortina...