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[headline] The shortest way down

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In a sport that send humans careening down a small tube at breakneck speeds, the smallest actions can
make the difference between a crash and grabbing gold.

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[headline] Sliding into first

[standfirst]
The basic goal of bobsled is to take a sled down a steep, icy tube at the fastest possible speed. Though
the sport requires tremendous courage and a cool head, it takes more than just the team of athletes to
take the win.

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At the inaugural 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, bobsledding made its debut. Alongside luge
and skeleton, it is a sliding sport that was featured in the Beijing Winter Games. At the 2022 Winter
Games, there were four separate bobsled events: two-man, two-woman, four-man and monobob for
women. Though these events are markedly different, the core of the sport remains the same.

In it, bobsled teams or individual athletes take turns sliding down the track before comparing times to
determine the winner. A race consists of four descents by each time, and the total time of the four heats
is used to determine the winner. Whichever team has the quickest time, wins.

Lifting one’s shoulder by just a few centimetres or shifting weight from one side of the hip to the other –
even for just a moment – can make the difference between netting gold or silver. Time differences are
subtle, and so each part of the race is crucial to a team’s success – especially the start.

In four-person sled teams, two people are designated as pushers, who work to push the sleigh to a
competitive speed at the start of the race, while a pilot and brakeman make up the rest of the team. At
the start, riders, wearing cleated shoes, run alongside the sled while pushing it to achieve the fastest
speed they can. As it builds speed, riders quickly jump in, with the driver in front and the brakeman in
back entering last. These sleds reach terrifying speeds, with heavier four-person sleds approaching 160
kilometres an hour, with two-person sleds achieving only slightly lower than that.

Though these athletes have no doubt put herculean levels of effort into achieving what they have, there
are countless engineers and designers behind the scenes to ensure that they are performing with the
best level of equipment available.
[subhead] Built to win
In a sport like bobsled where races are won by a hundredth of a second, technology and good
equipment are as integral to success as precise driving and quick starts.

In the beginning, bobsleds were built out of wood, adapted from delivery sleds for recreational
purposes. Eventually, steering mechanisms were added as well, allowing sleds to make longer runs and
withstand higher speeds. Steel runners were eventually adopted and by the mid-20th century, steel and
aluminum were common materials for a bobsled.

Since then, corporations and sporting associations have come together to push for one overarching
goal: to make faster sleds. The USA luge team uses data from mechanical and aeronautical engineering
professors, while Ferrari has had a longstanding relationship with Italy’s bobsled teams. In fact,
researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China’s main rocket producer, worked
to create the country’s first homegrown bobsled for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

After producing the first version of the sled, athletes were invited to test the model out, but an issue and
oversight was highlighted.

"We tried to narrow the area of the cross-section as much as possible, because the more streamlined an
objection is, the less drag it encounters," said Zhou Yu, a senior engineer with the research team. "But
the athletes felt uncomfortable after sitting in it because they found it difficult to stretch out their legs
and control the sled."

The research team had focused so much on speed and safety, especially as they worked to mesh
complex aerospace engineering with athletic design, that they had accidentally neglected trying to
incorporate human comforts into the sled. To tackle the issue, they invited the FAW Group Corporation
– a Chinese state-owned automobile company – to work with the team by bringing along their expertise
in vehicular interior design.

[subhead] Cool Runnings

For those not in the know, Cool Runnings is a 1993 Disney film that is loosely based on the story of the
Jamaican national bobsled team’s debut in competition at the 1988 Winter Olympics. The account is
heavily fictionalised and many liberties were taken in its direction, though the team did actually crash at
the Games.

Though the Jamaican bobsledding team has competed in six Winter Games since then, the team has
recently received much attention for qualifying for the four-man sled event in the Beijing Winter
Olympics for the first time in 24 years. A two-man bobsled team and woman’s monobob athlete have
also qualified, making Jamaica much of a competitor than it had previously been shaped up to be.

[vocab]
crucial (adj)
terrifying (adj)
herculean (adj)
adapt (v)
corporation (n)
expertise (n)