BEIJING — For bobsled, luge and skeleton racers, the twists and turns of sliding tracks are typically abbreviated by their numerical order: Curve 1, Curve 2, Curve 10 and so forth. But certain sections pose such fearsome challenges that they have earned special monikers too.
For example, British Columbia’s Whistler Sliding Centre is home to Slingshot, Shiver and Thunderbird. There is the Devil’s Highway in Lake Placid, N.Y.; the Devil’s Dyke near St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the unofficially dubbed Doodles outside Königssee, Germany. "Because if you don't get those right,” Great Britain skeleton racer Laura Deas explains, “you get doodled.”
Here at the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Yanqing National Sliding Centre is no exception in its share of eye-popping, hair-bending curves. Known locally as the Flying Snow Dragon, the venue has drawn attention for its signature, 370-degree, 217-meter continuous loop at C11, aka the Spiral, which subjects athletes to four-G forces for some seven seconds and spits them out at about 75 miles per hour.
