Back in March 2002 after major disappointment competing in the Salt Lake City, USA Olympic Winter Games we set ourselves the challenge of developing the world's fastest skeleton sled. The goal was to re-establish our performance in world competitions climaxing at the next Olympic Winter games in Turin, Italy, Feb. 2006. The legacy of this project would be to provide a foundation to support the up and coming young developing GB Skeleton athletes through to Vancouver 2010. As we did back in our aerospace days we uncompromisingly dissected the designs of our 2002 skeleton designs and identified the weak link in it's performance. We wanted to know where we were losing energy and therefore speed. The only power source (outside the athletes physical power delivery) accelerating the skeleton down the slopes, that as engineers we can tap into. is gravity. Gravity is the sole reason why this and the majority of all winter sports exist...well this and the low friction characteristics of ice and snow. So we needed to know where we were losing the precious energy that we needed to develop our speed. Once we understood the limitations to the sled design that we used in Salt Lake City we developed a 3 year programme that painstakingly and methodically brought together leading expertise from within the UK to support us in redeveloping the sled to extract fractions of seconds in performance, whilst adhering to the sled design rules by the international governing body of the sport, the FIBT. Once we understood the limitations to the sled design that we used in Salt Lake City we develop a 3 year programme that painstakingly and methodically brought together leading expertise from within the UK to support us in redeveloping the sled to extract fractions of seconds in performance whilst maintaining within the sled to extract fractions of seconds in performance whilst maintaining within the sled design rules issues by the international governing body of the sport, the FIBT. This project in brief details this 3 year programme and introduces our technology partners who we are continually grateful to for their patience, dedication and commitment. Along the way our project attracted the interest of the Discovery Channel which we have been working with for over six months following our work as part of a special three episodes series of technology programmes following the preparations of three athletes in the run up to Turin 2006. This programme will be aired worldwide. | Site Map | Terms of Use | Copyright © 2006 Ice-Sport-Tech Ltd.