112 replies to this topic

[Spacemans Bong]

I get where the women's lugers are coming from. They've cut off a fair bit of the track for them. The men were starting from the women's start, and they've now cut off a few more corners.

Edited by Spacemans Bong, 16 February 2010 - 08:34 AM.

[jkempa]

I get where the women's lugers are coming from. They've cut off a fair bit of the track for them. The men were starting from the women's start, and they've now cut off a few more corners.

These starts on women's luge are a complete joke. It really turned it in to a bit of a crapshoot. However, I am amazed by the speeds that they are getting even from the junior start. That's as fast as a lot of tracks from the top. Whistler is no joke.

Just guessing here since you don't see these athletes go from that spot often but they're going 83mph from junior and were going 90-92 from women's start. I would guess if they were at Park City it would be something like top speed of maybe 60 from junior versus 70-75 from women's start at Park City, which is a very fast track.

[Spacemans Bong]

These starts on women's luge are a complete joke. It really turned it in to a bit of a crapshoot. However, I am amazed by the speeds that they are getting even from the junior start. That's as fast as a lot of tracks from the top. Whistler is no joke.

Just guessing here since you don't see these athletes go from that spot often but they're going 83mph from junior and were going 90-92 from women's start. I would guess if they were at Park City it would be something like top speed of maybe 60 from junior versus 70-75 from women's start at Park City, which is a very fast track.

You know more about this than me, but I was stunned by how short the start is. Some of the women are only pushing twice before they get into the first corner. It's a little dinky to see two pushes and then them going through a corner at not much faster than walking speed.

[JimD]

Why couldn't they just keep the women's start point where it originally was? Was it fear of highspeeds, or is there some rule which dictates that the men's run must be longer than the women's?

I'm no expert in this sport, but it was painful to see some of these women struggling with what appeared to be a ridiculous start point, knowing that they had all of a few training runs to get ready for the pinnacle of their racing career. I think it really screwed Hamlin and some of the younger racers who maybe didn’t have the experience to adapt quickly enough.

[jkempa]

They lowered the women's start out of concern for the high speeds. The men were still hitting the low 90s from there and that is really, really fast. There was at least one concussion during training from there before they lowered the start point.

The junior start is kind of an afterthought for the track. I don't think anyone anticipated it would be used for Olympic competition and it showed in the design. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the athletes didn't want to push too hard at the start. If they got too much speed right away, they risked going straight up into the curve which would have exacerbated those oscillations you saw everyone struggling with. That kind of "mistake" is multiplied at the bottom - losing speed at the top has an exponential effect at the bottom of the track.

Incidentally, I spoke to one of my friends last night that used to compete on the World Cup skeleton tour. She was on the Vancouver track last year but got injured in training (at turn 16) and didn't actually compete in the World Cup event. This girl was once #4 in the World, so she is not an inexperienced slider. She said that the Whistler track was part of the reason she retired. She said it was not fun. It was scary. If you do not enter turn 16 (where the crash occured) perfectly, there was nothing you could do to even drive out of the mistake because the speed was so high.

[barbed wire Bob]

Jkempa, do you know why this track is so fast? One article I read said that the estimated top speed was supposed to be 137 kmh but, obviously, the actual top speeds are much higher. Did the track designers screw up or did Vanoc do something during the prep work that caused the track to be this fast?

[jcd0805]

Incidentally, I spoke to one of my friends last night that used to compete on the World Cup skeleton tour. She was on the Vancouver track last year but got injured in training (at turn 16) and didn't actually compete in the World Cup event. This girl was once #4 in the World, so she is not an inexperienced slider. She said that the Whistler track was part of the reason she retired. She said it was not fun. It was scary. If you do not enter turn 16 (where the crash occured) perfectly, there was nothing you could do to even drive out of the mistake because the speed was so high.

Thanks for the insight, that really brings home just how scary that track is.

[StupendousMan]

Jkempa, do you know why this track is so fast? One article I read said that the estimated top speed was supposed to be 137 kmh but, obviously, the actual top speeds are much higher. Did the track designers screw up or did Vanoc do something during the prep work that caused the track to be this fast?

To some extent, it's simple physics. This luge course drops a large distance
(about 143 m = 470 feet) over a relatively short length (only 1374 m
or 4500 feet), with only 16 curves. For comparison, the track used for
the Torino Olympics had a bobsled run (slightly longer than the luge run)
which dropped by a smaller distance, 114 m, over a longer run of
1435 m, and it had 19 curves.

The design of the track is responsible for the very high speeds.
If there were no friction, an object sliding down the track would
finish with a speed of about 53 m/s = 118 mph.

[jkempa]

Jkempa, do you know why this track is so fast? One article I read said that the estimated top speed was supposed to be 137 kmh but, obviously, the actual top speeds are much higher. Did the track designers screw up or did Vanoc do something during the prep work that caused the track to be this fast?

This track is fast mainly because it is long and steep - and especially steep at the top. There's an axiom of these sports that a second at the top is worth 3 seconds at the bottom. It seems to have been faster than expected from its opening. That is, there is nothing unique about the ice setup for the Olympics that is driving speeds so much higher.

Here are the stats for a few tracks for comparison. Altenberg had the distinction of being the most feared track before Whistler came around. Park City is short and very fast, but not particularly challenging. St. Moritz is long and fast (used to have the highest speeds in the sport). These stats are for bobsled and skeleton (from the top) - luge uses a different start that is shorter and much steeper since they don't have to run (which is part of the reason luge speeds are higher than skeleton). But you get the idea.

Track / Length / Maximum Grade / Drop / Average Grade
Altenberg / 1413m / 15% / 122.22m / 8.65%
Park City / 1340m / (Guess 15%) / 122.5m / 9.10%
St. Moritz / 1722m / 15% / 130m / 8.14%
Whistler / 1450m / 20% / 152m / 10.49%

So Whistler is long, it's steep, it's very steep at the top and the other thing is that it has several tight corners that act as a slingshot - g-force is at up to 5g, which is sick. Normally there are small uphill sections in a track too, and Whistler doesn't seem to have much of one from what I've seen.

Here's the factsheet on the Whistler track

Link to POV video (which is bobsled and a few seconds slower than where competitive athletes will be)

[barbed wire Bob]

Thanks for the info and links. I have never tried any of the sledding sports but in my youth I was an avid cyclist. The fastest speed I ever obtained was 60 mph going downhill on a 6% (average) grade. At the time I thought it was borderline insanity (but in a fun way). I know it's not the same but it does give me a rough idea of what these people are experiencing. A 10.5 % average grade is beyond insane.

[JimD]

I'm skeptical that the incredible speed of this run was a surprise to VANOC or anyone else involved in the track’s construction. I find it difficult to believe that they didn’t run numerous computer simulations of the design and pretty much knew how fast it was going to run. I’m guessing they were willing to push the envelope and believed that they could always take steps to dial it back and slow the track down if necessary.

[sachmoney]

Filed Warnings

WHISTLER, British Columbia — An Olympic luge athlete injured in a crash at the Whistler Sliding Centre in November warned Canadian officials about safety hazards at the track months before a competitor was killed last week at the Vancouver Games in an accident on the same course.

Werner Hoeger, who competed in the Turin and Salt Lake Games for Venezuela, said he lost consciousness and sustained a concussion during a botched training run on Nov. 13 after his sled caromed off an opening in the wall near the women’s start ramp. His injury most likely prevented him from attempting to qualify for the Olympics, he said. In a volley of letters and e-mail messages sent to Canadian and international luge officials since his crash, Hoeger warned that the track was unsafe and raised the same issues — including a lack of access to practice runs — now being debated after Nodar Kumaritashvili of the Republic of Georgia died on Friday.

There's a lot more in the article, didn't want to quote the entire thing.

[jkempa]

Wall Street Journal article about the design of the track

A few nits to pick with the article: There were injuries prior to the Olympic competition. The moves to slow speeds were only taken for luge - similar changes were impossible for skeleton and bobsled. And it's irrelevant that the police found that there was no fault of the track designers - I doubt that they are trained to make such an analysis. But otherwise interesting background.