Bobsleighing

Bobsleigh

A modern bobsleigh team, the 2010 United States top two-man team
Highest governing body	Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing
Nicknames	Bobsled, King's class
First played	1870s
Characteristics
Contact	None
Team members	Teams of 2 or 4
Mixed gender	Yes, but usually in separate competitions
Type	Winter sport, Time trial
Equipment	High-tech sled, Helmet
Venue	Bobsleigh tracks

Bobsleigh or bobsled is a winter sport in which teams of two or four teammates make timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sled. The timed runs are combined to calculate the final score.

The various types of sleds came several years before the first tracks were built in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where the original bobsleds were adapted upsized luge/skeleton sleds designed by the adventurously wealthy to carry passengers. All three types were adapted from boys' delivery sleds and toboggans.

Competition naturally followed, and to protect the working class and rich visitors in the streets and byways of St Moritz, bobsledding was eventually banned from the public highway. In the winter of 1903/1904 the Badrutt family, owners of the historic Kulm Hotel and the Palace Hotel, allowed Emil Thoma to organise the construction of the first familiarly configured 'half-pipe' track in the Kulm Hotel Park, ending in the village of Cresta. It has hosted the sport during two Olympics and is still in use today.

International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, also known as FIBT from the French Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing. National competitions are often governed by bodies such as the United States Bobsled and Skeleton Federation and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton.

Although sledding on snow or ice had been popular in many northern countries, bobsleighing as a modern sport originated relatively recently. It developed from two crestas (skeleton sleds) attached together with a board and with a steering mechanism attached to the front cresta. The sport had humble beginnings, starting when the successful marketing of hotelier Caspar Badrutt (1848–1904) enticed English tourists were to stay over the winter in the mineral spa town of St. Moritz, Switzerland. Badrutt, annoyed with the limitations of a season of a mere four months for the rooms, food, alcohol and activities he provided, successfully "sold" the idea of "winter resorting" to some of his English regulars. In the 1870s some of his more adventurous English guests began adapting boys' delivery sleds for recreation and began colliding with pedestrians while speeding down the village's lanes, alleys and roads.