Bobsleigh

Bobsleigh began with its invention in the late 19th century when the Swiss invented a sledge made of two skeletons welded together and equipped it with a steering mechanism. A frame was added to increase protection. The first bobsleigh club in the world was founded in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 1897. In 1948, Federico Terschak, Sisto Gillarduzzi, Guido Gillarduzzi, Uberto Gillarduzzi, Amedeo Angeli, and Francesco de Zanna founded Bob Club Cortina. It is the oldest active bobsleigh club in Italy. In early competitions, wooden sledges were used, but these were soon replaced by steel variants. The term "bobsleigh" comes from the movement with which the crews pushed the sledge back and forth to increase speed at the start of the run. Today, the best teams in the world train all year and compete mainly on artificial ice tracks using high-tech fibreglass and steel bobsleighs.

4-man bobsleigh was included in the competition programme for the first Olympic Winter Games held in Chamonix, France in 1924. The 2-man event was added at the Lake Placid 1932 Olympic Winter Games in a format that has remained unchanged to this day. The first Olympic 2-woman race was held at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. The inaugural Olympic monobob competition was held at the 2022 Games in Beijing.

The monobob event consists of a single female athlete, while 2-man and 2-woman bobsleigh races involve a driver (or pilot) and a brakeman. In 4-man bobsleigh there are an additional two athletes who help push the sledge at the start. The crew pushes the sledge for roughly 50 metres before jumping in, reaching speeds in excess of 40 km/h in less than six seconds.

A bobsleigh race is held over four heats, with each team or competitor logging one run per heat. The sledge with the fastest total time from all four heats, measured to a hundredth of a second, is the winner.

If two teams finish with the same time, they are ranked in the same place.

There is an advantage to being one of the first sledges to go down the slope while the ice is still smooth and not rough and scratched.

The starting order for the first heat of a race is determined in the following manner:

To determine which teams have the best starting position, the world ranking is used for the first run, with the first 10 teams choosing the starting order from 1 to 10, while the 11th and up follow the world rankings. In the second run, teams start in reverse order based on the results from the first heat (i,e, the 20th-ranked pilot will start first, and so on).

In the men’s events, which have more than 20 pilots, those who finished 21st or worse in the first heat will start in that same position in the second heat (21st-ranked starts 21st, etc.).

In the third run, the starting order follows the ranking after two runs. Teams ranked 21st or lower after the third heat are ineligible to advance to the fourth and final run. The fourth heat sees each sledge start in reverse order of their combined rankings from the first three heats.