What does it take to deliver a medal-winning performance in skeleton, which involves racing down a banked track faster than a car on a freeway, with your face mere centimetres from the ice?
Bobsled, luge and skeleton athletes descend twisting, steep tracks at speeds upward of 80 mph (130 kmh).
AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev
It may look like athletes in bobsled, luge and skeleton simply grab a sled and hang on until the bottom, but high-speed physics and tiny motions mean the difference between gold and a crash.
The alpine skiing course at the 2022 Winter Olympics, on Feb. 2, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. All the snow at this year’s Olympic venues is machine-made.
(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
An analysis of 21 former Winter Olympic venues found that only one of them would be suitable and offer safe racing conditions for athletes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.