Sport Profiles: Luge, Ice Dancing and Figure Skating

What is Luge? 

...Ice dancing? …Figure skating?

By: Frédérick Hallé

Do you really know what is the difference between Ice dancing and figure skating? Maybe you didn’t even know that Ice Dancing existed. 


What is luge? If you are truly an athlete you know what I’m talking about, but if you’re Mr. or Ms anyone, you think you know, but I am 99% chance sure that what you think it is, is actually bobsleigh. So these are the less known sports at National Sports Academy. Tucker West and Aiden Kelly are lugers; Brian D’Agostino is the ice dancer.

Luge is an extreme sport with one or two people on a sled going down a track all made of ice. Going feet first, they can reach speeds of 100 miles per hour and have a centrifugal force of 7G (which means seven times the force of gravity) when taking a large curve. There are a lot of risks that lugers take when they go down a track. Making a little mistake can cause death. The most recent one was during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Nodar Kumaritashvili fatal crash was caused by a steering problem, which is at the control of the luger.

USA luge team coaches, Mark Grimmette, Klim Gatker, Miro Zayonc, Bill Tavares, and Duncan Kennedy all reside in Lake Placid.

You can see a video that explains what is luge in more details.

http://www.usaluge.org/aboutluge/fastfacts.php

Figure skating is for both men and women. It can be single or a couple skating. It is judge on jumps, spins, and footwork. If it’s a couple, lift and death spiral are also judge. A Death Spiral is when the male skater brings his partner in the air and spins while they hang on for dear life. 

Ice dancing isn’t much different than figure skating. The only difference is that Ice dancing doesn’t have the jumps, and is almost always skated with a partner, and always with a partner at the Olympics. 

Below is a short video of pairs figure skating: