Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic bobsleigh run

Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic bobsleigh run
Aerial view of the railway in 2005
place	North Elba , United States
Installation	December 25, 1930
Orbit data Maximum height difference 128 m begin length Curves Bob start 1455 m 20th Skeleton start  m Toboggan start men 1455 m 20th Toboggan start women 1130 m 17th Double-seater start 1130 m 17th

Coordinates: 44 ° 13  '12.8 " N , 73 ° 55' 16.8"  W.

The Olympic bobsled Mount Van Hoevenberg ( English Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run ) is an artificial ice rink for luge , bobsleigh and skeleton in the US city of North Elba near Lake Placid in the state of New York . The track was the venue for bobsleigh competitions at the 1932 Winter Olympics . At the 1980 Winter Games and the Goodwill Games 2000, luge competitions were also held.

The third and current route was completed in 2000. In 2010 the railway was entered on the National Register of Historic Places .

history

The bobsled run was built in 1930 on the occasion of the 1932 Winter Olympics . According to the National Park Service, it was one and a half miles long and was surrounded by a forest all around. The route was designed by the German Stanislaus Sentzytsky . Due to a steeper curve drop than on the European railways, higher speeds could be reached on the railroad. With the winning of two gold medals and one silver medal for the Americans at the 1932 games, interest in bobsleigh grew in the country and over the years the Americans established themselves among the world's best.

Before the 1932 Winter Olympics, bobsleigh races took place on a steep slope, on which the MacKenzie Intervale Ski Jumping Complex was built as part of the 1932 Olympic Games . Under the direction of Henry Homburger , the railway was measured on Mount Van Hoevenberg from 1929 to 1930 . This happened whether there were protests for environmental reasons and the use of the land. Construction lasted from August to December 1930. On December 25, 1930, the railway was opened. The track was 2,366 m long and had 26 curves with a height difference of 228 m and an average incline of 9.6%.

After the 1932 Games, the first 829 meters and ten corners of the track were removed, reducing the length of the track to 468 meters, with 16 corners and an average gradient of 9.3%. With the 1949 World Bobsleigh Championship , which was held on the track, a World Bobsleigh Championship outside of Europe took place for the first time in history. The world championship was overshadowed by the death of the Belgian Max Houben , who fell during training in the "Shady curve". The Belgian team then withdrew.

After the safety of the track had been improved, another bobsleigh world championship took place in Lake Placid in 1961 . After the "zigzag curves" were fatally undoing for the Italian Sergio Zardini on February 22nd, 1966 , new safety measures were taken.

Other bobsleigh world championships followed in 1969 , 1973 and 1978 . 1978 took place from September to February 1979, the track was converted into an artificial ice rink made of reinforced concrete and opened in December 1979. Two years earlier, a separate luge track for the 1980 Winter Olympics was built in the autumn . The run, completed in February 1979, was the country's first toboggan run. A combined bobsleigh and luge track was built during the preparations for the 1980 Olympic Games. After the games, both the bobsleigh and luge world championships took place on both tracks in 1983 .

In the 1990s, skeleton races took place on the bobsleigh track for the first time , including the 1997 World Championship . At the turn of the millennium, parts of both lines were demolished and a new track was built for the Goodwill Games 2000, which was completed in January 2000. The track has been part of the Lake Placid Olympic Sports Complex since the end of the 1980 Winter Olympics and is managed by the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA).

In 2009 the world championships in bobsleigh , luge and skeleton took place on the track for the first time in a year in which no Olympic Games were held. In 2012 , 2014 and 2018 , the track was the venue for the America-Pacific Luge Championships , each of which was held in race-in-race mode with the Luge World Cup.

Curves

Curve	Surname	Background of the name
2-3	Cliffside	Named after the original cliffside curve because the route was along a cliff.
4th	Whiteface	Named after Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondack Mountains, New York. In the women's single-seat, double-seated and team relay luge competitions, the athletes start at a starting house near this curve and come onto the track in this curve.
5-9	Devil's Highway	Curves (5 to 7) followed by two short, consecutive curves (8, 9).
10	Shady II	Named after the Shady corner on the 1932 track. This corner was named because it was always in the shade, even when the rest of the track was sunny.
11-13	labyrinth	Three fast corners in a row.
14th	Benham's bend	Named after Stanley Benham , who won the gold medal in the four-man bobsleigh at the 1949 Lake Placid World Bobsleigh Championships.
15-16	chicane	Two smaller rolling turns on a long straight before Turn 17. The correct line through the chicane is a straight drive between the exit of Turn 14 and the entrance of Turn 17.
17-19	Heart curve trickle	The combination of turns was named after popular Wisconsin short-haul car racer and former NASCAR driver Dick Trickle . He took part in the Bodine Bobsled Challenge in 2006 and crashed in this combination of corners in both runs. The finish line for the skeleton competitions is at the exit of turn 19.
20th	target	End of the route, finish line for the bobsleigh and luge competitions.

Records

discipline	Track record	Start record
Bobsleigh
Two women bobsleigh	Sandra Kiriasis / Romy Logsch December 15, 2007 56.94 p	Kaillie Humphries / Shelley-Ann Brown December 15, 2007 5.54 p
Luge
Men's single seaters	Tucker West December 1, 2019 50,607 p	Semyon Pavlichenko December 1, 2019 6,300 p
Women's singles	Julia Taubitz November 30, 2019 43,658 s	Tatjana Hüfner February 6, 2009 6,350 s
Two-seater	Toni Eggert / Sascha Benecken December 15, 2017 43,372 s	Tobias Wendl / Tobias Arlt February 8, 2013 6.202 s
Team relay	Erin Hamlin , Christopher Mazdzer , Justin Krewson / Andrew Sherk December 5, 2015 2: 32.716 minutes
skeleton
Men	Alexander Tretyakov December 13, 2019 52.87 p
Women	Marion Trott February 26, 2009 56.23 s

Web links

Commons : Mount Van Hoovenberg Bobsled Run  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ WEEKLY HIGHLIGHT 02/19/2010 Mt. Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run, Essex County, New York. February 19, 2010, accessed December 13, 2019 . 
2. ^ Manfred Arnold: Olympic Report 1932 . ( la84foundation.org ( memento of April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; accessed December 13, 2019]).
3. ↑ Hot Runnings. Retrieved December 13, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Speed ​​Kings: the 1932 Winter Olympics and the fastest men on earth. May 6, 2015, accessed December 13, 2019 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Olympic Report 1980 . ( la84foundation.org ( Memento of August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; accessed December 13, 2019]).