(02-25-2018 09:29 PM)gsloth Wrote: Looks like he knows how to lower the head running through the hole. That's an incredible about of tuck. I usually think the 4th guy usually is closer to the height of the other helmets (which should all be trying to get in the slipstream of the driver's helmet).
A few years ago, I had a chance to ride the bobsled at Utah Olympic Park in Park City. The pilot is a pro, and they take three passengers. In our briefing, we were told NOT to emulate the neck tuck that the pros do, as apparently it's a fairly dangerous position if you don't do it right (and also once you put your head down, you can't really get it back up). Instead we were told to keep our necks vertical but with our heads scrunched down toward our shoulders. The scrunching is important to keep your neck from whipping forward or backward. (Sounds appealing, doesn't it?)
A few other impressions:
- It took about 15 minutes to get the three passengers loaded into the sled behind the pilot -- after which we were pushed off by the staff. It makes the running start that the pros do all the more impressive.
- Once we got going, the track seem to come at us so fast that it was impossible to have any sense of what was coming ahead -- i.e. of anticipating the curves and so on. There was a great sense of speed, but no sense at all of where the sled was going.
- The turns were really jarring. They felt less like rounding a curve and more like getting slammed from one side.
It was not one of those things where, when you finish, you think "Wow, I want to do that again right now!" And that surprised me.