As you all know, campus is buzzing with anticipation for the upcoming Winter Olympics, which will soon be taking place in America’s own backyard: Vancouver. One of the stranger competitions on display will be Skeleton, a sport in which participants with names like “Matthias Guggenberger” and “Martins Dukurs” hurtle down a bobsled track at speeds of over 129 km (80 miles) per hour with only a few inches and an austere looking slab of a sled between them and an icy grave. There are, according to Wikipedia, “No steering/braking mechanisms allowed.” And yet, all of that doesn’t quite capture how weird Skeleton really is.

In Skeleton, the winners are usually separated from the losers by absurdly tiny margins of victory. In the recent Skeleton World Cup competition, the first place “pilot” completed the approximately 1200 meter course a mere 0.93 seconds ahead of the fifth place finisher. As a result, the sport has become extremely technical, even scientific: on TV broadcasts of Skeleton, an on-screen graphic displays the temperature of the ice track alongside the temperature of the “control steel.” I don’t know what the control steel is, but it sounds like a metaphor for the state.

None of this, however, compares to the real commentary of the TV broadcasters who peddle their obscure knowledge about this obscure sport on the Universal Sports subsidiary of NBC. A few selected quotes are below:

• Male Commentator: “Payne was one of the first to revolutionize the one-handed start.”
• Female Commentator [After a pilot has just flipped his sled at 60mph]: “I can tell you, that’s all ice and it’s all burn.”
• Female Commentator: “You’ve got to tell the sled who’s boss.”
• Male Commentator: “The Germans are really doing well with their equipment research.”

And, finally, this incredible description of one stalwart competitor:

• Male Commentator: “He has suffered from depression, alcoholism and Tourette’s Syndrome in the past, but he is here today.”

Really? Tourette’s?

While you are becoming acquainted with Skeleton and other surreal sled sports, I encourage you to blast this new track by Sleigh Bells. It’s loud. I warned you.

Tags: deadliest winter sports, new music, Vancouver 10, Winter Olympics 2010