Crafting Ice For the 2010 Olympic Luge Track
Preparation Starts Well Before the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony
Sep 17, 2009
Construction of the track at the Whistler Sliding Center was completed, give or take some testing, in 2007, four years after Vancouver, BC was awarded hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics. For the ice-meisters as the five ice specialists are known, hired by the Vancouver Organizing Committee, their challenges had only just begun. Making ice for an Olympic sliding track is a year round, life-long science.
Olympic Events at the Whistler Sliding Center
Bobsled or Bobsleigh
- 2 and 4-man events
- Women’s 2-person event
- Involves an aerodynamic, fiberglass-nosed sled, that weighs 635 kg (1,400 lb) and sits on four polished steel runners.
- These power athletes push off as fast as they can for the first 50 meters (164 feet) then jump in for a seated descent. The front man steers and at the end of the track, the back person breaks.
Luge (French for sled)
- 1 and 2-person events for men and women
- Competitors start by sitting on open fiberglass sleds. By pulling on handles fixed in the ice at the start gate, they explode into the race.
- Spiked gloves on the ice surface for the next few seconds gives sliders extra propulsion before the competitors lie on their backs on the sled and steer with legs and shoulders.
- The racers stop by sitting up, putting their feet on the ice and pulling back on the sled runners.
Skeleton
- Individual men's and women's events
- Originally made just of metal, the sled for this event got its name because it resembled a human skeleton.
- Grasping the handles of today’s modern sled made of metal and fiberglass the racer sprints out of the start gate for the first 50 meters then dives head first onto the sled.
- Laying on their stomach on the sled, the slider steers with subtle weight shifts.
Olympic Luge Bobsled and Skeleton Track
The serpentine track that will stage the Olympic bobsled, luge and skeleton events is:
- 1.6 km long (nearly a mile)
- Top elevation of 3080 feet (939 meters)
- Base elevation is 2582 feet (787 meters)
- Sliders reach speeds of up to 95 miles / hour (153 km / hr)
- Competitors can create more than 5 Gs of force around a corner
- Straight stretches of the track are U-shaped
- High banked curves are C-shaped and can be overhanging
- Some events are held at night.
These are some of the conditions that ice needs to accommodate with a thickness of just 1.5 to 3 cm (1 – 2 inches) thick. The ice must be a specific temperature, texture, composition, even color (thanks to television), varying between venues.
Challenges of Making Ice at the Whistler Sliding Center
Vancouver's climate with its combination of sea-level elevation and high humidity creates specific ice-making problems for the Whistler Sliding Center at the upcoming 2010 Olympics. The kinds of things that the Olympic ice-making specialists need to keep in mind when it comes to making ice are:
- The ice must be a specific temperature.
- In February when the event will be held it sometimes snows at the top of the track and rains at the bottom.
- Parts of the track are angled towards the midday sun. Other parts are always in shadow.
- Broadcast demands – banks of hot lights and inflexible event schedules.
Up until recently events and training sessions have been carried out to test the limits of the refrigeration system and gage the effects of spectators, lights and athletes on the ice. Ice specialists toured Vancouver’s water treatment plants to study their product’s key ingredient. In September, with the track chilled by refrigeration running through pipes in the concrete, water will be sprayed from hoses until there is an inch of ice.
John Branch of the International Herald Tribune, reports that the trick is, “to keep the ice, no matter the forces working against it, between 24 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4.5 to -3.9 Celsius). Warmer, and the outer layers can turn slushy. Colder, and the brittle ice can crack in sheets. Inconsistencies can be dangerous, even fatal.”
Olympic fans come to the games to marvel at the spectacle and athletes focus on the task at hand both oblivious to the behind the scenes work that goes into keeping the ice as consistent as possible. While sliding competitions can take several hours, medals are often determined by hundredths of a second.
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