Just Another Day Down the Ice Chute

The winter sport of skeleton is for the fast and f

eurious; to outsiders, the sport may seem perilous, but to the athletes, it’s a much-welcomed adrenaline rush

Story and photos by Amanda Smith

Whizzing headfirst down an ice track at top speeds of 90 miles per hour on a sled would be dangerous to many, but to skeleton athletes, it’s just another day of training. Without steering or brakes, knee or elbow pads, sliders zoom past the rambunctious, cheering crowd with little protection. Due to the speed needed to quickly complete the track, only a helmet and a skin-tight speed suit are necessary to win the race. In nearly sixty seconds flat, the athlete has finished their charted course.

"To go from picking apples to shoving myself down an ice shoot…is life altering," said novice Skeleton slider Leisel Soergel."

Soergel, 24, from Pittsburgh, Penn., is a brand new hopeful to the sport who currently trains on the outskirts of Lake Placid at the Olympic Sports Complex atop Mt. Van Hoevenburg. Although she is presently a beginner of the sport, she learns from other athletes she trains with such as Luke Schulz who has won 2nd overall in 2008-2009 America’s Cup for Skeleton.

Schulz is not the only athlete to compete in the America’s Cup racing circuit that Soergel has trained with. She also happened to be friends with someone who knew 2008-2009 America’s Cup 2nd place winner in Bobsled, Jazmine Fenlator.

“I got a phone call from one of my really good friends,” Soergel said, “She said ‘I have a friend who’s on the U.S. Bobsled team and she needs someone to brake for her in Park City, Utah and she’s going in two weeks. Do you want to go?’”

"To go from picking apples to shoving myself down an ice shoot…is life altering."

Soergel had never seen a bobsled or the track it went on, but she knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“I never imagined in a million years that I would be sitting in a bobsled,” she said.

Fenlator paid for Soergel’s cost of the trip and how ever much was needed to compete. They traveled to Utah with the intention of winning the America’s Cup, a prestigious bobsled racing circuit, in the women’s division. An additional two weeks were spent traveling to and competing in Brazil, Australia and Japan as well. Once back home, Fenlator still wanted Soergel to brake for her in a few Lake Placid competitions.

While competing for the bobsled athlete, Soergel fell in love with sliding sports which prompted her to investigate further. Upon speaking with two developmental Skeleton athletes and a coach from Lake Placid, she decided to pursue the sport.

“As a brakeman in a bobsled, all you see is the floor of the bobsled,” she said. “You pretty much get banged around and finish, (but) with Skeleton you go head-first so you really have control and you get to see what’s happening.”

The Olympic Complex’s Skeleton coach allowed Soergel to train at a beginner’s camp in early January, where she has been training ever since. Although sliders can reach speeds of up to 90 mph, novice athletes start at the middle of the track and only go about 30 mph.

“It’s still pretty intense when you’re first starting out,” Soergel said. “(The coaches) give you a push and say, ‘good luck!’”

While at beginner’s camp, budding sliders soar down the ice track with little knowledge, but one thing they are taught from the start is to warm up before every slide session.

The athletes quickly jump around and do short, yet effective exercises, such as lunges, to warm up. As with anyone else their age, mindless chatter becomes the focal point of the moment as some sliders strip down to their speed suits while others begin to stomp around loudly in the balmy cabin before their turn on the track.

Warm-ups are an essential part of making a successful run down the track, slider Sherri Emery said. Because the fiberglass sled can be about 80 pounds due to its steel runners, it’s important to have upper body strength.

Emery, 20, from Gloucester, Maine, has been training at Lake Placid for almost two years. She knows the ins and outs of the sport as well as the functions of her expensive equipment. Emery wears a material similar to Under Armour underneath her speed suit, but some sliders choose to wear nothing at all; special shoes equipped with tiny spikes in the front of their soles are worn to grip the ice and steel runners on the bottom of the sled are used to give the sled traction.

Emery spends a few hours a week in the tiny, well-lit lounge of her Plattsburgh State dorm sanding the runners to rid them of scratches. Even tiny scratches can slow the sled down so drastically that it costs an athlete the race, she said.

“Everything gets worn down pretty quick,” Emery said. “It depends how badly you beat [the sled] up and how good you take care of it. I probably spent a few thousand (on equipment). It’s intense, but you find ways to get money – I worked over the summer. If I can’t afford something, my parents help out.”

“(The coaches) give you a push and say, ‘good luck!’”

The track is also designed with speed in mind. Grooves in the track are meant to help the athlete align the sled’s runners to ensure a straight 40-meter run and jump-off point. Like a swimmer pushing off the edge of a pool, skeleton sliders push off a block at the start of the track to build up the momentum of sled and slider. The length of the sprint varies for every slider and depends on their physical fitness, height and weight.

“There are very few feelings in the world that can compare to the first 20 seconds of a Skeleton run,” slider Bradley Chalupski wrote on his blog. Running and pushing off can seem boring until you have to jump onto the sled, he explained on his Web page.

Chalupski, 25, who hails from Marlboro, New Jersey, has been a Skeleton slider for over three years and is currently finishing up his last semester of law courses at Seton Hall University.

According to Chalupski, sliders are always trying to find new ways to better their time on their runs. During a recent run, he attempted a different approach when sliding into a series of particularly difficult turns. His attempt did not end as he had hoped, as he was flipped over while coming off a high turn and landed back on the icy track without a sled, still hurtling downward at a dangerously high speed.

“What happened to me today is I got way too high on one of the curves and…I just fell,” Chalupski said. “I used my knee to flip myself onto my back and then kick myself back onto my stomach because you don’t want to put your hands out – you’ll burn the skin off.”

Injuries for the day included an extremely puffy hand and badly bruised hip, but that’s nothing, he said. Thankfully only Advil and ice were needed to ease the pain over the next two weeks.

It’s important during a crash, he said, to keep yourself moving so that your body doesn’t stay on one side for too long. If skin and ice stay in contact for more than a few seconds at such high speeds, the friction between them can cause severe damage.

“You just have to have a certain character to put yourself at high risk.”

Due to the fact that a slight turn of the head is all it takes to maneuver the sled, one small movement could steal precious seconds from your finish time – or even your life – but the potential dangers of Skeleton aren’t the first thoughts in a slider’s mind as they approach the track.

“You just have to have a certain character to put yourself at high risk,” said recently retired Skeleton slider and former two-time Olympian, Chris Soule.

Soule remembers 2010 U.S. Olympic Skeleton slider, John Daly, had that same character he spoke of. You have to be able to handle the sport well mentally and physically and Daly seemed to be good at both, he said.

As he reflected on the tragic death of twenty-one-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed on the same track used for all Olympic sliding sports, Soule mentioned that injury and death are always a possibility, but recalled feeling invincible when constantly putting himself on the line.

“It happened before and it’ll happen again,” he said.

Although the sport may be too intense for some, it is unique and amazing and above all phenomenal, he said. Soule went on to say it’s a wonderful sport for spectators because it’s so extreme.

“(The North Country) is a great area to get on an extreme kick,” Soule said. “I’m glad I could compete on such a high level…and feel fortunate to have been a part of the sport as well as the area.”

Do you think you have what it takes to compete in Skeleton?