Olympic sports: Luge

The Olympic days kick off in less than a month and eurosport.com continues its countdown to Salt Lake City 2002. Luge is a sport that not a lot know of. An event that has quite an interesting Olympic history. Here’s all you have to know on Luge…

Competition Date: 10 to 15 February 2002

Venue: Utah Olympic Park

Olympic Debut: 1964

Events: Men’s, Women’s and Doubles

History

The word “luge” is derived from the French word for sled. Findings from the Slagen countryside near the Oslo Fjord suggest that sleds with a high body, corresponding to the modern sled, were already in use in the year 800.

The first international race took place in 1883 in Davos, Switzerland, with 21 competitors from 7 nations. The first World Championships were held in 1955 in Oslo, Norway. Two years later the lugers broke away from the FIBT, the bobsled and toboggan federation, to form their own Federation Internationale de Luge de Course (FIL).

Luge joined the Olympic programme for the first time in the 1964 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck with three events - men’s, women’s and doubles. Of the 90 medals that have been awarded since 1964, 88 of them have gone to athletes from Germany, Austria, Italy or the former Soviet Union!

Qualifications

Athletes must have competed in at least three competitions sanctioned by the FIL between 1st November 2000 and 27th January 2002. Each nation may enter a maximum of three men, three women and two doubles teams. A maximum of 110 luge athletes will compete in Salt Lake City.

Basic Rules

Tobogganing includes three sports: Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton. They can easily be distinguished by the position adopted by the competitor:

- in Bobsleigh, the competitor is sitting down

- in Skeleton, the competitor is lying on his stomach going down head-first

- in Luge, the competitor is lying on his back feet-first

Lugers start from a sitting position at the top of a short starting ramp and pull off with their arms from two fixed start handles.

The events:

There are three luge events – men’s, women’s and doubles. There is no rule that says a doubles team must comprise members of the same sex, but traditionally, men have slid together, with the larger man lying on top for a more aerodynamic fit.

The singles events consist of four runs each held over two days, with two runs per day; the doubles competition includes two runs in one day.

This is a dramatic difference from the singles events contested at World Cups and World Championships, where only two runs are taken. With four runs, the emphasis is placed on not only endurance but also consistency and the ability to put together solid runs as the pressure mounts on the second day.

Time:

Each run is timed to the nearest 1/1000th of a second, making luge the most precisely monitored Olympic Sport with short track speed skating. Timing was previously calculated to 1/100th of a second until two doubles teams tied for gold at the 1972 Sapporo Games!

In each event, the luger or pair with the lowest aggregate time after all the runs is the winner.

Material:

The maximum weight of a sled, including any attached accessories may not exceed 23 kg in the singles competitions and 27 kg in the doubles competition. Officials also check the temperature of the steel runners on an athlete’s sled to make sure they have not been heated.

Everything worn by a slider is designed for speed: suits, booties or gloves

The venue for the Luge competitions is Utah Olympic Park, considered the world’s fastest luge track. Sliders will exceed 145 km/h.