Steel on ice
It’s all about speed. This past February, as athletes from around the world gathered in the mountains of northern Italy for the twentieth Olympic Winter Games in Torino, two of the competition’s fastest sports featured the flash of sharp steel blades.
Skeleton might best be described as extreme tobogganing—on these steel blades, you need nerves of steel. The sport is named for the tiny sled on which riders rocket down an icy track at breathtaking speeds. But these top-level athletes don’t sit on their sleds. They ride on their bellies, careening head-first down the dizzying turns of the course without brakes, steering only by shifting their body weight. Don’t try this at home!
In Team Pursuit Speed Skating, two teams of three skaters each race against each other over many laps of a long-track course. All those skaters flying around the course at top speed can mean trouble—one slip of a skate blade can bring skaters down hard.
These exciting, high-speed sports are featured on two domestic rate (51¢) stamps issued by Canada Post to honour the efforts of the Canadian Olympic team at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy. |
