February 2002 - Nr. 2
Olympic Focus
Skeleton Set for World Stage in Utah
TWIG - It could be called the grandfather of extreme sports. Skeleton, the sport in which competitors hurtle headfirst down a track of ice on a flat metal sled at speeds exceeding 80 miles per hour, debuted at the 1928 winter Olympic games. It returns to the program 54 years later in Salt Lake City this February. Former world champion Steffi Hanzlik and Diana Sartor make up Germany’s women’s team. Eight-time German champion and 1998 world champion Willi Schneider and Frank Kleber comprise the men’s team.
Skeleton was invented as a pastime in the 1880s in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where racers would sit or lie on sleds to speed down icy streets to the town of Celerina, where winners would be rewarded with a bottle of champagne. It didn’t take long for racers to figure out that they could increase their speeds if they went down headfirst. The sport is named for the original sleds, said to resemble skeletons. The sport soon became an official competition, but not an Olympics mainstay. In 1985, after decades off the world stage, a skeleton world cup series was launched.
Technical advances of the last century seem to have eluded skeleton sled-makers. The 36- by 16-inch boards of steel or fibreglass have neither brakes nor steering mechanisms. The combined weight of the sled and driver cannot exceed 253 pounds for men and 202 pounds for women. Steering is accomplished by shifts in weight and position and, sometimes, by dragging a toe. Helmets and chin guards are the only protection the rider has from the perils of the ice track.
The town of Altenberg in Saxony is home to one of Germany’s main ice tracks, a 1,413-meter run with a 122-meter overall change in altitude. Altenberg was home to the 2002 national skeleton championships, as well as the European luge championship. It is one of only four bobsport tracks in Germany; the most famous is the Koenigsee track in Berchtesgaden.
Steffi Hanzlik won the overall world cup title in 1999, the world championships in 2000 and finished second overall in the 2000/2001 world cup standings. A former luger, she took up skeleton in 1995 after watching a race in Oberhof. "It took me about one and a half years to get the driving technique, but then it was extremely fun," Hanzlik said last year in an interview with a German sports journal. "The appeal of a skeleton sled is that your head is only a few centimetres over the ice and the curves loom before you. If you’re positioning your head optimally, you can only see two and a half meters ahead," Hanzlik said. The 26-year-old soldier receives training and support from the German army.
Hanzlik and Sartor are ranked sixth and seventh respectively in the world cup standings. On the men’s team, Willi Schneider, 38, is Germany’s senior slider, having taken up the sport in 1989. Schneider is an engineering draftsman who lives in Waldkraiburg and is currently ranked ninth in the world. Team-mate Frank Kleber, 20, of Munich is ranked 14th.
For much more on Germany at the Winter Games, visit the Germany Info website. Here you’ll find an InFocus feature covering current German medal hopefuls, new Olympic sports like snowboarding and skeleton, and past Olympians. You’ll also learn about the best places in Germany to test your metal in a variety of winter sports. And you’ll learn about the last time Germany hosted the Winter Games, in 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
