(Reuters) – Focus on bobsleigh at the Beijing Olympics.
THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
*Teams hurtle down a specifically designed, ice-covered, twisting monitor on a mechanically steered and braked sledge.
*For males there are competitions for two- and four-person groups, whereas for ladies there are two-person and – for the first time – one-person (monobob) occasions.
* Teams make 4 runs, with every run counting in the direction of the complete time.
HOW MANY MEDALS?
There are 4 gold medals up for grabs – in the males’s four- and two- individual races and in the ladies’s two-person and monobob occasions.
WHAT HAPPENED IN PYEONGCHANG?
In the males’s two-person competitors 4 years in the past, Germany’s Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis tied for first place with Canada’s Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz. Germany took gold in the four-person, in addition to the ladies’s two-person, with Mariama Jamanka and Lisa Buckwitz.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT IN BEIJING?
Germany will likely be the staff to beat once more, with Freidrich being touted as the biggest bobsleigher of all time, although Kripps and Canada stay challengers.
In the ladies’s, Team USA’s Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries will likely be robust competitors.
WHAT’S NEW?
We will see the Olympic debut of the monobob, with a single driver in the sleigh.
With all rivals having to make use of the identical design and mannequin sled, it’s seen as a leveller for competing nations with completely different budgets.
WHEN IS IT HAPPENING?
Feb. 13 to Feb. 20.
WHERE IS IT HAPPENING?
The sliding occasions are being held at the newly constructed Yanqing National Sliding Centre, in a mountainous space 74 kilometres northwest of Beijing.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
The bobsleigh’s origins return to the Swiss alpine resort city of St Moritz in the Eighteen Eighties, when a steering mechanism was placed on two hooked up sleds to make a toboggan. The city just lately hosted the ultimate World Cup race earlier than the Olympics.
One of the most well-known of the Winter Olympic sports activities, the four-man bobsleigh has featured in all however certainly one of the Winter Games since the first in 1924.
WELL FANCY THAT
The sport stays deeply related to the 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings”, about the first look of the Jamaican bobsleigh staff at the 1988 Calgary Games. The four-man Jamaican staff will likely be again for its first occasion in 24 years in Beijing, with Jamaica competing in three completely different bobsleigh occasions.
(Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
