Bobsleigh at the Beijing Olympics

(Reuters) – Deal with bobsleigh on the Beijing Olympics.

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS

*Groups hurtle down a specifically designed, ice-covered, twisting monitor on a mechanically steered and braked sledge.

*For males there are competitions for two- and four-person groups, whereas for ladies there are two-person and – for the primary time – one-person (monobob) occasions.

* Groups make 4 runs, with every run counting in the direction of the full time.

HOW MANY MEDALS?

There are 4 gold medals up for grabs – within the males’s four- and two- individual races and within the ladies’s two-person and monobob occasions.

WHAT HAPPENED IN PYEONGCHANG?

Within the males’s two-person competitors 4 years in the past, Germany’s Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis tied for first place with Canada’s Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz. Germany took gold within the four-person, in addition to the ladies’s two-person, with Mariama Jamanka and Lisa Buckwitz.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT IN BEIJING?

Germany would be the group to beat once more, with Freidrich being touted as the best bobsleigher of all time, although Kripps and Canada stay challengers.

Within the ladies’s, Staff USA’s Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries will probably be powerful competitors.

WHAT’S NEW?

We’ll see the Olympic debut of the monobob, with a single driver within the sleigh.

With all opponents having to make use of the identical design and mannequin sled, it’s seen as a leveller for competing nations with totally different budgets.

WHEN IS IT HAPPENING?

Feb. 13 to Feb. 20.

WHERE IS IT HAPPENING?

The sliding occasions are being held on the newly constructed Yanqing Nationwide Sliding Centre, in a mountainous space 74 kilometres northwest of Beijing.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The bobsleigh’s origins return to the Swiss alpine resort city of St Moritz within the Eighteen Eighties, when a steering mechanism was placed on two connected sleds to make a toboggan. The city not too long ago hosted the ultimate World Cup race earlier than the Olympics.

One of the crucial well-known of the Winter Olympic sports activities, the four-man bobsleigh has featured in all however one of many Winter Video games because the first in 1924.

WELL FANCY THAT

The game stays deeply related to the 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings”, concerning the first look of the Jamaican bobsleigh group on the 1988 Calgary Video games. The four-man Jamaican group will probably be again for its first occasion in 24 years in Beijing, with Jamaica competing in three totally different bobsleigh occasions.

(Reporting by David Kirton; Enhancing by Hugh Lawson)