RP296 Luge

 RP296 Luge

If you ever need to get down an icy hill as fast as possible, a luge might be a good choice. If, however, you want to get down that hill without being scared out of your mind and exposed to great danger, you might want to stick to safer options.

Luge is one of the most dangerous winter sports. Luge athletes whip around an icy track at 90 to 160 kilometers per hour. On top of that, they do it all lying flat on their backs, exposed to the elements, inches from the hard ice floor, with nothing to protect them but a helmet.

Luge is the name of the sled and the sport of riding it down a hill. A luge is a one/ two-person sled that the athletes lie in on their backs. The sliders keep as flat as possible and steer the luge mostly with their feet, though there are handles as well. They can race either on natural or artificial tracks. Natural tracks are long and nearly flat, with no artificially banked curves. Artificial tracks are very different. They' re steeper and full of high banked curves. They' re also faster and much more dangerous. Luge athletes face very serious injuries if they make a mistake, and there have been a number of fatal accidents in luge. The most recent high-profile accident happened at a training run during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, Canada, in which an athlete from Georgia died after losing control of his sled.

Like many other sledding sports, luge was developed in St. Moritz, Switzerland. It began in the mid-19th century when tourists at the spa town began using delivery boys' sleds for fun. By 1883, sliders were organizing meetings. In 1964, luge was accepted as an Olympic sport. The rest, as they say, is (very fast-moving) history.