Anke Wischnewski of Germany competes in the World Cup Women's event during the Viessmann Luge World Cup in November at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, Canada. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images) "The fastest people are the people that are out of control," explains Canadian slider Chris Moffat, describing the action of the luge and the temperament of the slider. "It's the fact that you're not always in control that's nice. You don't know what's going to happen next; you have an idea, but you're not sure. Anything could happen."
"It's like 140 kilometres an hour," says CBC analyst Chris Wightman.
"The next time you're going 140, take a look out the car window and see. Take a look at the pavement and see how fast it's going past you and think what it'd be like to be down there."
To the novice viewer, this is what the sport seems to embody — somehow hanging on through extreme speed and danger. Because of the required elements of raw speed and precision, the slider must develop a sense of abandon in order to succeed.
Yet at the heart of the sport is a demand for exactitude. With very little protection, the slider moves down a series of curves and stretches. The body is extended into a long and tight position on a sleek fibreglass pod that bridges two polished steel blades.
The slider needs to be both heavy enough to gain speed and momentum going down the track, and weightless enough to maneuver through the air and gravity forces. Luge crashes are spectacular and fierce, and there's little to protect the athletes once they're bouncing and scraping along on the rough ice surface of the track. Finely calibrated muscle movements and subtle steering are essential.
Sliders move between the extremes of controlled and wild in an exhilarating race through icy twists. Ask luge athletes what it feels like, and they'll tell you that in a good run, it's probably the best feeling ever.
All about the start
A good start has a major bearing on the race. Strength and quickness are the two key factors. The strength element comes in rocking back and forth and hurtling forward the slider's own weight, the sled, and extra weights — which may be attached to sleds to help lighter sliders compensate for the weight advantage of heavier athletes — through the start handles.
In an instant, the need for quickness comes into play, as the slider paddles the ice with spiked gloves down the top part of the track to generate more push. The paddling action might not look like it, but it requires extreme upper body and hand strength.
Much like the bobsleigh or the skeleton, a strong start goes a long way toward determining the end result.
To build strength for explosive starts, luge athletes build up their upper bodies in summer workouts, which include weight training and cross training with swimming and speed exercises. At the Ice House in Calgary, the Canadian athletes practice on two indoor ramps. Canadian doubles slider Mike Moffat says the benefit of this facility is tremendous, since they can now do approximately 10 starts in half an hour, as opposed to the three complete runs they perform in a normal training day.
Masters of the Track: Strategy and focus
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Canada's Regan Lauscher, of Red Deer, Alta., races down the track during her first run at the Luge World Cup in Whistler, B.C., on Friday, February 20, 2009. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) Once the slider has become optimized physically in both athleticism and sled technology, it becomes a great head game according to Wightman. There's so little difference in the skill and physical suitability between the top 10 lugers that it is anyone's game, and any edge is largely psychological.
"Everyone is so close together that the person who is more confident that day is going to win," he explains.
At the Olympics, the sliders will have to maintain their confidence and focus under special racing conditions. The Olympics racing format strays from the World Cup and World Championship races wherein the winner is determined over two runs.
In Vancouver, the men's and women's singles compete over two days, with two runs per day. Their results are tallied into a total time with the fastest time taking gold. In doubles, the racers perform two runs in one day with the fastest total time determining the winner.
Doubles
In doubles, the procedure is much the same with a few key differences. The taller athlete on top shares the steering responsibilities with his partner underneath. This positioning assures an aerodynamic line down the track.
Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber of Italy take their first run in the Doubles during the Viessmann Luge World Cup in November at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, Alberta. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)Racing together is an exercise in trust and non-verbal communication. Chris Moffat explains that he gives subtle body cues like a slight turning of his head or a shift in shoulder pressure to his partner.
"That gives him a good estimate as to where we're going to go in a corner," he says, "because the bottom man has all the steering power on the doubles sled, but he can't see, and the top man can see, but only has minimal steering."
Like a midway ride
At the top of the run the slider tends to be extremely focused on the track. But as soon as the luger lies down before going into the first curve, powerful G-forces press upon the body and then subsequently release coming out of the turn.
"It's sort of like going to the midway on some of those rides where you're just pushed and plastered against the seat that you're sitting in," Wightman says.
Sliders subtly move their shoulders, legs and hands to steer the sled through the curves. Assuming an aerodynamic shape with arms and legs outstretched, they absorb every bump and fight the gravity forces that enwrap them. By the end of track, as they sit up and pull up the sled runners to skid to a stop, they feel as though they've been released from a compression chamber.
To endure these pressures, the athlete must be in superb condition. Luge athletes often suffer back injuries, inflammation and bruised hands. "There's just a lot of getting beat up," Wightman says, "going a few rounds with the champ."
Explaining the edge: Meet Professor Luge
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Canada's Jeff Christie, of Calgary, Alta., smiles after finishing his second run at the 2009 Luge World Cup in Whistler, Canada. Christie finished in 13th place. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) German domination of luge is a historical fact and current reality. Take, for example, Georg Hackl. He's won three Olympic gold medals and countless European and World Championships. The German women's team has been equally formidable on the circuit.
"The East Germans, legend has it, used to give a PhD in luge," says Wightman. "They did have it down to a science."
The German sled-making technology is a well-guarded secret, handed down from champion to champion. This is both a point of frustration and awe for their rivals, and it's kept teams around the globe guessing as to how they move so fast.
"For sure, there's some technology that (the Germans) have that the other teams don't have yet that's putting them just a little bit faster than everybody else," says Farstad.
At a basic level, all teams must adhere to a common set of equipment standards. Each sled is custom-made to accommodate differences in weight, weight distribution and length. The sleds cannot weigh more than 25 kilograms for a singles sled and 30kg for a doubles sled. Blades are polished with sandpaper and diamond paste to make the surface as frictionless as possible. The temperature of the runners is also regularly taken — it's illegal to heat runners, since that would enable them to reduce the friction on the ice.
The winning edge is found in the coach's expertise in sled preparation and fine tweaking, according to Wightman. Sliders report the technical feel of the run to the coach, who in turn makes minor adjustments to the sled. The coach's knowledge is extremely specialized and classified.
"There's probably a dozen people in the world who've got that up in their heads, and they're the head coaches of the successful teams around the world," says Wightman.
The winning teams seem to have an indefinable sixth sense in which they can accurately project how the elements of ice, humidity, and air work together.
