At 90 MPH, Daly experiences five Gs of force heading into the track’s banked corners, which makes his eight-pound head, sitting just an inch above the ice, feel like it weighs 40-pounds instead.
I’m not sure I’d want to know how it feels to go head-first in the Skeleton Bobsled while flying down the track at 90 mph. The idea of your head being just an inch above the ice in the prone position is something a lot of people would worry obsessively about and no doubt be unable to get past. Plus, pulling 5 g’s down the slide would be enough to turn anyone off to a repeat of a single run, let alone 15 years worth of it.
The kind of shape this guy has to be in has to be absolutely intense. The torque that’s used from one’s body has to be measured and used just right, otherwise I can see this sport getting very ugly very quickly. Skeleton bob, as it’s been named, can trace its roots all the way back to 1882 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. It used to be practiced in the streets much to the consternation of pedestrians. I can just imagine that injuries ran rampant what with no real padding to speak of and no safety measures on the level of those that exist today. Of course those safety measures might be a mere formality really when you consider the overall danger of the sport and what it would mean to wipe out.
Even a four-man bobsled doesn’t seem like it would suffer as much damage as this one individual if he were to somehow miss a cue and go careening into the wall. As he’s been doing it so long there’s not much chance that he’d make a mistake just out of the blue, which is thankful. But the idea that once he’s done feels energized is both understandable and just a little bit crazy. He states that a person needs to get in touch with the sled, and to enjoy the speed and the rush, what he doesn’t say is that by letting it all go you get in touch with the very fact that if anything did happen death is almost assured. Going those speeds and careening down an icy ramp that offers no give and no mercy is a sure way to break or shatter something, or everything, in a human body. That’s only a part of why it’s impressive though.
Look at the size of the sled in comparison to the size of the rider. The sled isn’t big enough to do anything but offer a place to rest his torso and quads. The rest of his body has to hang from the sled and remain absolutely still for the entire mile length of the course. That alone has to take some strength and a great amount of nerve. I can only imagine what might happen to a person if their toes dragged, or if their heads dipped. It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s for sure.
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