Olympia Bobrun St. Moritz – Celerina

Olympic Bob Run St. Moritz - Celerina
Route map
place	St. Moritz and Celerina , Switzerland
operator	Olympic Bob Run St. Moritz - Celerina
Installation	1904
Orbit data Maximum height difference 130 m begin length Curves Bob start 1722 m 19th Skeleton start 1722 m 19th Toboggan start men 1722 m 19th Toboggan start women  m Double-seater start  m

Coordinates: 46 ° 30 '14 "  N , 9 ° 50' 55"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred eighty-four thousand nine hundred sixty  /  153127

The Olympia Bob Run St. Moritz - Celerina opened in 1904, making it the oldest and only natural ice bob run in the world. Every year, and this has been the case for more than a hundred years, it is built by hand within three weeks. For the construction of the world's largest ice sculpture, around 15,000 m³ of snow and 7,000 m³ of water are required every year, without chemical substances.

history

Mainly British winter guests were looking for a place to practice their newly invented sport, bobsleigh . They were united in the Saint Moritz Bobsleigh Club , founded in St. Moritz in 1897 , the oldest bobsleigh club in the world. In the first few years there were disputes with the skeleton riders of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club about using the Cresta Run . In 1903 a gala evening brought in almost 11,000 Swiss francs. This enabled the construction of a bobsleigh run to begin immediately. Thanks to the support of Alphonse Badrutt and the extensive area of ​​the Kulm Hotel made available, the track was inaugurated on January 1, 1904 with a bobsleigh race. Alongside the Arosa bobsleigh run, it is the oldest permanent bob run in Switzerland.

The bobsled run still runs through the pine forest of St. Moritz Badrutt's Park to Celerina-Cresta along Via Maistra, the connecting road from St. Moritz to Celerina, which is closed for the entire bobsled season.

Major events

During its 100-year history, the Olympic Bob Run hosted two Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and 1948 . The competition on the occasion of the games of 1928 is unique in this respect. It was the only competition that was held in the five-man bobsleigh. In 1948, the two-man and four-man bobsleigh were already used in today's popular disciplines. In total, the Olympic Bob Run was the venue for 22 world championships (18 in bobsleigh, 3 in skeleton and 1 in luge ). Various European bobsleigh championships, a European skeleton championship, the 2013 bobsleigh world championship and countless world cups in the two and four-man bobsleigh, skeleton and luge were held here. In 2020 there was another major event on the Olympic Bob Run, because the monobob , skeleton and luge races of the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games were held here.

Railway construction

"At the starting point of the St. Moritz bobsleigh run", painting by Johannes Martini (around 1905)

From the beginning of the bobsleigh run from St. Moritz to Celerina until the early 1980s, the responsibility for its construction lay in the hands of the local Angelini family, who built the run for three generations. In 1985 Louis Prantl took over responsibility for railway construction. He was replaced in 1990 by Christian Brantschen from Celerina, who is still responsible for the construction today.

In the last week of November, the South Tyrolean railway team travels to build the railway within three weeks. It is built from scratch every year. Although every curve in the terrain is precisely leveled, there are minimal changes in the lines every year.

Construction starts from the Sunny Corner . The construction team works its way in the direction of travel to the Horse-Shoe , then on through the forest to the Bridge Corner , then down to the Martineau Corner and up to the Portago Corner until the finish line is reached with the exit . In the end, the line will be built from the start to the Sunny Corner and, when it is completed, the lift will be combined into one piece. However, the desired process can be impaired by high temperatures or lack of snow.

After completing the shell construction of the railway, the railway team splits up. Each railway worker is assigned a section of the route and is responsible for its final construction and maintenance. The daily repair work is mainly carried out in the afternoon and takes up to four hours per section. After the end of the season, dismantling will begin immediately and the protective sun sails will be removed.

Routing

Logo of the Saint Moritz Bobsleigh Club

The route is still almost unchanged today over a length of 1722 meters. The difference in altitude is 130 meters with an average gradient of 8.14%.

The curves were named by the British bobsleigh athletes who started the track. The English names have been preserved to this day, they are also represented in the logo of the Saint Moritz Bobsleigh Club .

Kuven number	Surname	Reason for naming
1.	(Begin)	The start takes place at the start house " Dracula ", the Dracula Club founded in 1973 by Gunter Sachs .
2.	Wall Corner	Named after the wall that delimits the curve.
3.	Snake Corner	A curve like a snake.
4th	Sunny Corner	The sunniest part of the track.
5.	Nash-Dixon Corner	Named after the British bobsleigh pilots Anthony Nash and Robin Dixon , gold medalists in the two-man bobsleigh at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck , the only forever members of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club.
6th	Horse-Shoe Corner	Curve in a horseshoe shape.
7th	Telephone Corner	A telephone was installed here on the first runway.
8th.	Shamrock	Shamrock
9.	Devils Dyke Corner	Teufelsdamm curve
10.	Tree Corner	Here was a tree on the short wall of this curve.
11.	Bridge Corner	After you have passed this curve, the railway bridge can be seen over the rest of the route.
12.	Leap
13.	Gunter Sachs Corner	Named after Gunter Sachs, President of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club from 1969 to 2011.
14th	Martineau Corner	Named after Hubert de Martineau, a major in the Swiss Army, out of gratitude for his 44-year presidency (1922–1969) at the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club.
15th	Portago Corner	Named after Alfonso de Portago (1928–1957), who won the bronze medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the 1957 World Bobsleigh Championship in St. Moritz, the only medal to date at a World Bobsleigh Championship for Spain; he had a fatal accident just a few weeks later in the Mille Miglia car race in Italy . A foundation in his name made it possible to convert the lower part of the route.
16.	(Outlet)

Horse Shoe Curve in Summer (2012) ...

... and in winter (2020)

The most obvious changes to the route were made in the lowest part of the track. Due to the ever higher speeds, braking became more and more difficult until the braking zone no longer met the requirements of the sports equipment. After the World Championships in 1957, the track was changed for the first time.

Further route changes followed in the 1980s and in 2002. In the winter of 1955/56, the horse-shoe curve, the heart of the track, was reinforced with natural stones and the radius increased by 2.5 m. A 4.5 m high wall with a 1.75 m high board wall on top also made it possible to quickly get the Horse Shoe ready for operation even with small amounts of snow. Nevertheless, in 1995 the curve had to be adapted to modern conditions a second time. Above all, the pressure from the bobsleighs increased, so that even the guests of the popular “bobsleigh taxi” trips had to endure up to 5 g , i.e.  five times their own body weight. Due to this pressure and the narrow runners, grooves and holes developed very quickly over the course of the season, which more and more impaired regular training and driving operations. Within three months, the radius was extended by a further 2.5 m by relocating the driveway almost 4 m to the right into the slope, which made the curve rounder and slightly larger. At the same time, the entrance was increased by 1.5 m, which reduced the speed by around 2 km / h and significantly reduced the damage in the ice.

building

Not only the course and the curves were adjusted over time: the small start house, which was both a bar and cloakroom, gave way to a new building in 1972: a start house with office space, cloakrooms, the clubhouse of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club and the Dracula Club built. This new building was expanded in 1992, 1993 and 2002 to meet the increasing requirements.

In the early years of the Olympia Bob Run St. Moritz - Celerina, the Sunny House was a popular meeting place on the track. The ladies and gentlemen of the high society viewed the Sunny Corner in the heated bar through a large window front . Over the years this meeting point was closed and the Sunny House was converted into a storage room for building materials.

Today the bar is in the Horse-Shoe curve . Every year a temporary arrangement was made, but it did not give the audience the opportunity to warm up at temperatures down to minus 25 degrees. This deficiency was remedied in 2005 with the final construction of the Horse Shoe Lodge. At the end of the old finish line towards Crasta Hill, a small finish house with sanitary facilities was built in 1992. This was later replaced by a complex target building with cloakrooms, medical facilities and other rooms.

schools

The Olympia Bob Run offers at least one monobob, one bobsleigh and one skeleton school during the season. The schools are run by professional pilots. A minimum age of 16 years (up to the age of 18 with written consent from parents) and good physical fitness are part of the prerequisites for participation in the schools.

Guest trips

The history of guest bobsleigh rides goes back to the 1930s, when Nino Bibbia and intrepid society women drove from St. Moritz to Celerina by bobsled. The guest toboggan runs in today's sense have only been known since 1973, when the then operations manager was looking for a way to bridge the less frequented opening times. Back then, the trips were done with the "after-work" type bobsleigh.

In order to take a guest ride, a prior reservation is essential. There is daily driving after the training and / or racing drives. Only a limited number of guest trips can be carried out during international events.

Television documentary

• The roller coaster of the Alps by Erich Grünbacher and Andreas Niederkofler ( 3sat )

Web links

Commons : Olympia Bobrun St. Moritz – Celerina  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Olympia Bob Run - official website
• sportschau.de: Sport Inside: St. Moritz and its unique natural ice rink. , accessed February 20, 2019

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Saint Moritz Bobsleigh Club - official website of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club .
2. ↑ Information IBSF
3. ^ The kings of St. Moritz. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . December 3, 2006.
4. ^ 3sat: The roller coaster of the Alps by Erich Grünbacher and Andreas Niederkofler