There are several sports in the programs of the Winter Olympic Games, representing different options for downhill skiing. For some of them, snow cover and relatively simple equipment of an athlete (for example, alpine skiing) is sufficient, others require ice tracks and special sports equipment. Skeleton refers to the second type of downhill sports.
Most of all, this sport is similar to a toboggan - a brave racer uses a projectile on two steel runners to descend from a mountain along an ice chute. As in luge, this is a timed competition - the winner is the one who can complete the entire course in the shortest time. To do this, the athlete must control his projectile, choosing the most optimal trajectories for cornering and trying to touch the ice chute as little as possible, so as not to slow down the projectile even for hundredths of a second. Unlike a sled, a skeleton apparatus is a flat plastic shield on which the athlete lies with his chest, changing its direction either by deflecting the body or touching the ice track with special pads on the shoes. This is a rather traumatic sport, as the racer on the fastest tracks accelerates to a speed of 130 kilometers per hour.
The first official competitions in this sport began to be held in the Swiss St. Moritz at the end of the 19th century. There, a track of the required parameters was built and the first skeleton was constructed. And when this city received the right to host the II Winter Olympic Games, the skeleton was included in the competition program. American Jennison Heaton became the first Olympic champion in 1928, and his younger brother John received a silver award.
The next time this sport appeared in the Olympic program was in 1948 at the 5th Winter Olympics, which was also held in St. Moritz. This was followed by a break that lasted for 54 years. For the 2002 Olympics in the American Salt Lake City, the St. Moritz circuit was not the only one for a long time, and the regular world championships have been held for 20 years. Since the 19th Winter Games, this sport has been featured at all Winter Olympics. The Russian Olympians have so far won only one medal in the skeleton - at the last games in Vancouver, Alexander Tretyakov took third place.
