What Is Skeleton in the Olympics? The Only Sport Where You Have to Win on Your Tummy

Skeleton is one among 15 sports activities within the 2022 Winter Olympics. However what precisely is it? Why does it look so weird and the way do you win? Right here’s an explainer.

Skeleton falls beneath the “ice sports activities” class, one among three classes on the Beijing Olympics. It’s the one sport the place you must run all the race mendacity in your abdomen. Athletes can go away their sleds to push or transfer them however must move the end line on the sled, in that susceptible place, to ensure that the run to rely.

There are solely two occasions — males’s and ladies’s races — and each will happen at Beijing’s iconic Yanqing Nationwide Sliding Centre.

Each Olympic skeleton occasions consist of 4 runs timed electronically to the 1/one centesimal of a second. In Salt Lake and Torino, solely two runs have been contested.

The 4 runs might be contested on consecutive days (two runs every day, beginning Thursday, Feb. 10). The ultimate standings are decided by the whole time over the 4 runs. Whoever has the bottom mixture time wins.

If athletes full the competitors in a tie, they’re awarded the identical place.

Skeleton returned to the Olympics after a 54-year hiatus in 2002. The game was beforehand contested in each 1928 and 1948, the 2 instances the Winter Video games have been held in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the accepted birthplace of the game. The game was based there within the late Nineties and commenced as the game of “cresta.”

What’s With the Sled?

The skeleton sled is made up of runners, a chassis, an aerodynamic glass-fiber cowling that covers that chassis, and the saddle, which holds the torso of the physique in location on the highest of that chassis, and bumpers, which function the slider’s safety.

Helmets are required and opponents’ footwear can have spikes — however there are restricted to the scale. As is the case with bobsled and luge, sled runners are an important element of the occasion, for the sheer cause they’re the one a part of the sled involved with the ice.

The Begin — and Begin Order

The beginning is permitted by an audio and visible sign, and from that time, the athlete has 30 seconds to start out the run. The competitor might speed up the sled by pushing it; another assist through the beginning process is prohibited.

The ten best-ranked athletes select begin numbers 6 to fifteen within the males’s occasion and 4 to 13 within the ladies’s occasion. For males, the primary 5 beginning numbers are drawn from the final seven ranked athletes within the area.

For ladies, the primary three beginning numbers are drawn from the final 5 ranked athletes within the area. The remainder begin in ranked order. The primary warmth begins with the athlete with the bottom quantity and continues so as till all athletes have gone.

The second warmth’s beginning order relies off ends in the primary warmth. It begins from Twentieth-ranked competitor to the primary, after which continues with the twenty first to the final.

The third warmth relies off the mixed rankings from the primary two heats. It begins with the top-ranked competitor and runs till the last-ranked competitor. These ranked twenty first and decrease after the third warmth are ineligible for the subsequent warmth.

The fourth and last warmth begins with the Twentieth-ranked competitor and go till the first-ranked competitor has completed.

“Katie Uhlaendar” might not be a family identify. However the 37-year-old skeleton veteran has been given the inexperienced gentle to slip by her fifth Video games on the 2022 Winter Olympics — becoming a member of a really unique membership of Winter Olympians. 

By competing, Uhlaendar earns a variety of superlatives. For one, she ties the document for the U.S. girl with most Olympic appearances. She’s additionally the one U.S. girl in any sliding sport to seem at 5 Video games. 

Kelly Curtis, who hails from Princeton, New Jersey, may even compete for Crew USA in her Olympic debut, as will Andrew Blaser.

Curtis, 32, scraped into the second ladies’s quota spot with a sixth-place end at Friday’s race in St. Mortiz. Simply 24 factors on the IBSF rankings earned her a ticket to the world’s largest sporting competitors. Curtis is a member of the U.S. Air Pressure who makes a speciality of cybersecurity, and comes from a army household. 

The only U.S. males’s skeleton slider headed into the Video games, 32-year-old Blaser started as a pole vaulter on the College of Idaho. He later discovered skeleton by an curiosity in bobsled.

Blaser ranked world No. 28 on the time of choice, forward of three-time Olympian John Daly. He is likely one of the document variety of brazenly homosexual athletes competing on the 2022 Winter Olympics.