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Unofficial Olympic Guidebook: Skeleton
Unofficial Olympic Guidebook: Skeleton
Unofficial Olympic Guidebook: Skeleton
Ebook40 pages26 minutes

Unofficial Olympic Guidebook: Skeleton

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About this ebook

Nothing quite matches excitement of the Winter Olympics! This book will be your guide to skeleton. Learn about the history of the sport and get a recap on all the drama from Vancouver before the Sochi Games begin. Find out how the format is changing in 2014 and who will likely be the athletes on the podium when the Games are done! Enjoy this book to better understand skeleton, how it works and what to look for at the Sochi 2014 Games.
BONUS: Learn how to get started in skeleton!

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2014
ISBN9781310018862
Unofficial Olympic Guidebook: Skeleton
Author

Kyle Richardson

Kyle Richardson is an Olympic fanatic. During the 1996 Games he gave himself a bladder infection because he did not want to leave the couch. Overshare? Maybe. Or maybe it is just a preview of all of the amazing Olympic facts that you will find in his guide books. Be brave, buy a book, and find out for yourself.

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    Book preview

    Unofficial Olympic Guidebook - Kyle Richardson

    History

    Descriptions of sleighing can be found as far back as 16th-century literature, but the sport owes its roots to some mad Brits on holiday in the mid 1800’s. The tourists had been lured to St. Moritz, Switzerland during the winter by the successful marketing of a hotelier looking to expand the selling season for the rooms, food, alcohol and activities he sold. A year or two later some of his more adventurous guests began adapting boys’ delivery sleds for recreation and began colliding with pedestrians while speeding down the village’s lanes, alleys and roads. Thus, early sliders terrorized the pedestrians of St. Moritz until the world’s first natural ice half-pipe track was created for the overall safety of everyone involved.

    Three sports came out of the fiddling of these crazy holidaymakers. Guests began to scheme and invent steering methods for the sleds, which became the luge, bobsleighs (bobsleds), and head-first skeleton. Skeleton sliders became known for their head-first, face down approach, steering through the use of torque provided by the head and shoulders and incredible speed.

    Skeleton appeared on the historical Cresta Run at both the 1924 and 1948 St. Moritz Olympic Games. Skeleton was not included in any other Winter Olympics until the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.  Since then, skeleton has found an increase in popularity worldwide as well as a permanent position on the Olympic event schedule.

    Memorable Olympian – John Heaton

    American John Heaton showed up to the 1928 St. Moritz Games with his older brother Jennison. The two would compete against each other with Jennison besting John, but the brother’s came in first and second, gold and silver, respectively. Fast forward 20 years to 1948 and the Games are held in St. Moritz once again, and once again John Heaton is ready to compete in skeleton. He is the American flag bearer and at 40 years old, one of the oldest athletes at the Games. He once again placed second and took home a silver medal from St. Moritz topping off a 20 year career in sliding sports.

    Who Has Dominated Previous Play

    While from the chart below, it might appear that the USA does well in skeleton, half of those medals were achieved before credit cards and

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