Slip-sliding away in the pursuit of curious sport

ATHLETICS: AS FAR as I can tell, the only difference between the luge and the skeleton is that in the luge you lie on your back, feet-first, and in the skeleton you lie on your front, head-first.

Other than that what sets them apart? All you need is a small tray and an icy hill. Indeed I had some great fun trying both the luge and the skeleton during the recent snowfall in the Dublin Mountains. My friend tried them too, after I pushed him down the hill when he wasn’t looking.

The luge must be the only sport in which you could have people competing against their will. And it would be exactly the same. You could just grab people off the street. “Hey, what is this? I don’t want to be in the luge!” Just put the helmet on him and you wouldn’t hear him scream. Ahhhhh . . .! World record. And he didn’t even want to do it. Why don’t they have that? The involuntary luge?

And it’s on the bobsled run. But it’s not even a sled. It’s just bob. It’s just a human being hanging on for dear life. This is the whole sport. Just, Ahhhhhh . . .! Look, he pointed his toes! This guy is a tremendous athlete.

Jerry Seinfeld did a sketch along these lines. “What I don’t understand about the Winter Olympics,” he said, “is that they have no connection to any reality. Take the biathlon. Let’s combine cross country skiing with shooting a gun. It’s like combining swimming and strangling a guy. Why don’t we have that? That makes absolutely as much sense to me. Just put people in the pool at the end of each lane for the swimmers to strangle.”

Truth is there are plenty of people who think the Winter Olympics are a bit of a joke, and sometimes you can see their point. One of the funniest sporting moments I’ve come across was the speed skating sprint at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where Steven Bradbury from Australia adopted the “hope everyone else falls” tactic. Which is exactly what happened.

Bradbury only made it out of the quarter-finals when one of the favourites was disqualified. He was in last place in his semi-final when three skaters fell ahead of him; in the final, all four skaters ahead of him crashed on the final turn, leaving Bradbury the most unlikeliest of champions – and first person from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Winter Olympic gold. (Check out YouTube.)

When it comes to the Winter Olympics, it really is a case of let the fun, and Games, begin. Vancouver is sure to provide hours of late-night entertainment the next two weeks.

For some, it is serious business, and that 30 competitors have already been excluded for failing doping tests is proof of that. For others, it’s the après-ski that matters most, not the medal ceremony. I don’t know if Baron de Courbertin had anything to do with the Winter Olympics, but he’s old motto about taking part certainly rings true.

So when a country such as ours take to the piste, it’s hard not to, well, take the piss. A little bit anyway. All the commotion this week surrounding our women’s bobsleigh entry didn’t help. Ever since Cool Runnings became the surprise box-office hit in 1993, a team of bobsledders from any country where snow is more novel than custom is invariably a source of amusement. That our entry was being challenged by Australia and Brazil – where to the best of my knowledge it never snows – has been the basis for several hilarious jokes.

I’m sure Aoife Hoey and Claire Bergin aren’t bothered by any of this. Despite what some people might think, they are serious athletes – with serious athletic credentials. Hoey was Irish triple jump champion in 2005, and Bergin was part of the Irish 400-metre relay that finished fourth at the European Indoors in Turin last March.

They’ve brought the same commitment to bobsleigh training as they did to their athletic training, the one adjustment being it’s a lot more difficult to cart a bobsleigh around with you than a pair of running spikes. Qualifying for Vancouver is the result of a long and determined campaign, and they’ve also done it on a minimal budget, with very basic training facilities.

“We both need speed and power, for the start,” Hoey told me before leaving for Vancouver. “We also do the same training, explosive weight-lifting, like the clean, and bench, that we did in athletics. Our big ambition was to qualify, and we’re thrilled to be at that standard, and the pride that comes with representing the country at this level is unbelievable. But there’s a few nations out there we’ll give a run for their money.”

Ireland’s brief Winter Olympic history has demonstrated how athletes can readily transfer their talents to the ice. Terry McHugh, 21-time Irish national javelin champion, was among the pioneers, competing in the bobsleigh at Albertville in 1992, and again in 1998 in Nagano, along with hammer throwers Simon Linscheid and Garry Power and sprinters Jeff Pamplin and Peter Donohoe.

But we have Lord Clifton Wrottesley to thank for pioneering our Olympic skeleton challenge and the notion of careening down an icy hill on a small tray at 140kph. The British peer with an Irish passport famously finished fourth in Salt Lake City, and suddenly, briefly, Ireland was a true Winter Olympic nation.

It was Lord Wrottesley who introduced Patrick Shannon to the skeleton, and in Vancouver he’ll become our third representative in this rollercoaster and – let’s be serious for a moment – slightly terrifying event. Once again he comes with real athletic credentials, having been the dominant Irish triple jumper for over a decade (Shannon won four outdoor titles and five indoors).

In 2006, he fractured his ankle, which put an end to his jumping days, so former jumping colleague Siobhán Hoey – sister of Aoife, and chef de mission in Vancouver – suggested he try a Winter Olympic sport.

“The background in athletics really helps,” Shannon told me. “In the skeleton, a 10th gained at the start is worth three-tenths at the bottom. Being able to accelerate at the start is the exact same as the triple jump. You start from a standing position, you build up your speed, and then you actually jump onto the sled. The similarities are quite close. But it doesn’t suit all athletes. I remember Linford Christie once tried it. After a couple of runs down, he said ‘no way’.

“And there is a lot of steering involved. Little head movements cause the sled to go left or right. Similarly with little touches of the feet on the ice. But most of the steering actually comes from the shoulders and the knees. You flex the sled, and dig the runners into the nice. That causes friction, and turns the sled. Experience is the big thing, really.”

That may be true, but as far as I can tell, the only difference between winning and losing in the luge or the skeleton or many Winter Olympic sports is the extent to which you are willing to risk your life.

Sadly, this became a tragic reality yesterday with the death of a 21-year-old from Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed in training on the luge run in Vancouver.