Down the hill skeleton style — headfirst at highway speed!
I slip-slide into an open chute on the bobsled track at Olympic Park in Park City, Utah, looking and feeling like a laughably lame impersonator of some comic-book superhero. I'm sheathed in a red and blue spandex body suit with "USA" stenciled across my bottom in white letters, along with shoulder pads, elbow pads, gloves, snow boots, and yet another crash helmet. A rare thrill, I'm about to plunge crookedly downhill — headfirst, of course — on a 100-pound metal sled called a skeleton.
But hey, not to worry. I'm under the tutelage of Cassie Revelli, a deceptively wiry 24-year-old blonde who weighs approximately 10 pounds more than my sled. Cassie is a specialist in skeleton — one of the three Olympic sliding sports — and a former member of the U.S. national skeleton team. She started about 10 years ago, after her brothers called dibs on bobsled and luge. On this snowy winter afternoon, she's introducing me and seven other novices to the thrills and chills of her sport, an experience Olympic Park offers to the public for $50 per person.
"Skeleton is the safest of all the sliding sports," Cassie assures us as we huddle on the bobsled track. "No one who's tried what you're about to do has been seriously hurt."
Maybe not, but as Cassie duly notes, the sport actually evolved out of a drunken dare called Cresta sledding, concocted by British party boys in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 1884. (Rather than race luge-style, riding on their backs, they'd head down Cresta Run face first.) Skeleton was contested as a medal sport in the Winter Olympics of 1928 and 1948, which were both held in St. Moritz, but was dropped thereafter because officials deemed it too dangerous. After more than four decades of technological and safety improvements, however, skeleton was reintroduced at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
"There are only two things I want you to remember," Cassie tells us. "The first is, Never let go of your sled ... it's your lifeline. The second thing is, Don't forget to breathe."
Yeah, right! The bobsled track is basically a tube of ice falling from a 40-story-high perch that features 15 turns with banked walls. Expert sliders reach top speeds of more than 80 miles per hour. We're launching from what's known as the "tourist start," about two-thirds of the way down at turn 12. Our top speeds are likely to be no more than 50 miles per hour. But still, come on — 50 miles per hour! Going down a bobsled track! Headfirst! Yikes!
Cassie coaxes me onto the skeleton with a last-second tip: "Just be the sled."
At this point, I don't have much choice. The chin strap of my crash helmet is less than five inches above the bobsled track. I certainly don't want to be the ice!
Cassie grabs my snow boots and shoves me down the open chute at the tourist start toward turn 12. The first thing I see is a shaft of pale light about 10 feet ahead of me. That's also the next to last thing I see. Due to recent and continuing snowfall, the maintenance crew has covered the rest of the bobsled track with tarpaulins. There is no sunshine coming in. We're talking wh-wh-wh-whiteout!!!!!
The whiteout only heightens my other senses, one of which is a sense of imminent nausea. The sled slides left, right, left, right on successive turns, climbing the banks at 45-degree angles. I feel my shoulders pinch against frozen walls as I pingpong down the straightaways. I hear the runners crunching the ice crystals like egg shells. I smell fear reeking from me like rotten yolk.
Then the sled lunges uphill, slowing across the finish line. A second shaft of light beams through an opening in the tarpaulins. My nausea vanishes amid an awesome adrenaline rush. I taste the sweetness of a uniquely transformative accomplishment. I'm not just a cheap stand-in for a comic-book superhero anymore. Now I'm the real deal. I leap to my snow-booted feet, hollering at the top of my lungs:
"I am Slider Man!"
