Salon Wanderlust | Apres moi, de luge

T A B L E_T A L K
What's the best way to get cheap airplane tickets? Share your tips in Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Higher! Faster! Wetter!
By Gary Kamiya
Our half-Japanese man in Japan reports on the thrill of victory -- and the agony of Nagano
(02/09/98)
Mondo Weirdo
By Sarah Schmelling
Why I loved being lonely and sick and far from home
(02/06/98)
Soba, so good
By Koji Yoshii
Savoring Nagano's specialty food
(02/05/98)
The big steamy?
By Courtney Weaver
Searching for sex in New Orleans
(02/04/98)
Fear, drugs, and soccer in Asia
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
Hedonistic expats: Fear, drugs and soccer in Asia
(02/02/98)

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APRES MOI, DE LUGE _|_ page 2 of 2

Today I went to the second and final run of the men's single luge, held at a venue called "Spiral" on a mountain 40 minutes outside Nagano, while my father rocketed off on the pointy-nosed train to Tokyo ($50 one way) to meet Emiko. (He actually did see her this time; they had a great time and filled in a few blank branches on the skeletal family tree.) It was about 28 degrees up there, so I bought a can of hot Kirin wine -- they're very big on hot canned drinks here, which isn't surprising in the vending-machine capital of the world. I made my way up the course through the crowd, which, like that at most events I've been to, was overwhelmingly Japanese. The organizers cover the snow at these alpine events with straw, but people in street shoes are constantly falling down all around you. I stopped at a spot that looked like it would have a view of two sections of the course.
Luge is a kind of toboggan on which the contestant (or contestants) lies on his back and steers with his feet. It's one of the most dangerous events at the Olympics -- they didn't want to introduce it in 1964, and a rider was in fact killed that year. It's a very weird event to watch in person, because you don't actually see anything except for a half-second blur of a maniac aiming his crotch at ice walls at 80 mph. This event gives a whole new meaning to the expression "balls out." The course itself is a cross between a roller coaster and a frozen irrigation ditch -- a 922-meter-long rectangular tube of ice that snakes its way down and up and around the face of a mountain. At its narrowest, it's only about four feet wide and two feet deep, but on the turns on the steepest part of the course, it's an eight-foot-high vertical wall -- and they use most of that eight feet, too. When you're watching from the middle part of the course, you don't see anything for 20 or 30 seconds. Then you hear a peculiar low rumbling sound up the run, and an instant later a one-man express train blasts by two feet away from you. The force is awe-inspiring.
After the forerunner blasted past me, I dashed to the other side of the path to find him on a lower stretch of the course. It was 100 yards away, and I only had to go a few feet, but by the time I got there, he had already vanished -- that's how fast they go. On television you get the entire view of the run, and sled-mounted cameras are scarily intense, but nothing prepares you for the adrenalin needle of pure speed in the heart of seeing a man shooting past you inches away at freeway speed. Little shrieks were torn from the lips of middle-aged Japanese ladies as they watched.
The favorite, German Georg Hackl, is one of the all-time great lugers -- he's won two gold medals in a row. He entered the second day's runs with a big lead over an Italian, Armin Zoeggeler, and his arch rival, Austrian Markus Prock, whom he beat in Lillehammer by 13 thousandths of a second -- the closest finish in history. There was no suspense this year -- he won in a cakewalk, more than half a second faster than the runner-up, Zoeggeler. But there isn't a whole lot of visual drama to the duel between contestants when you see it live -- they all go by at what appears to be identical speed, and the suspense only comes when you look at the clock after the run to see who's the leader. All in all, one live luge experience was enough for me. Still, if the Winter Games are all about gravity and inertia -- falling, gliding, controlling impersonal force rather than creating it -- luge, with its sheer maniac express-train force, is one of the most hellbent-for-the-bottom events.
Tomorrow is my dad's last day here. We're going to cross our fingers, hope the weather gods and shuttle-bus potentates smile and embark on the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Saku up to the icy slopes of Happo-one in Hakuba, to watch some skiing -- one of the Games' glamour events, the men's combined downhill.
SALON | Feb. 10, 1998


T A B L E_T A L K What's the best way to get cheap airplane tickets? Share your tips in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Higher! Faster! Wetter! By Gary Kamiya Our half-Japanese man in Japan reports on the thrill of victory -- and the agony of Nagano (02/09/98) Mondo Weirdo By Sarah Schmelling Why I loved being lonely and sick and far from home (02/06/98) Soba, so good By Koji Yoshii Savoring Nagano's specialty food (02/05/98) The big steamy? By Courtney Weaver Searching for sex in New Orleans (02/04/98) Fear, drugs, and soccer in Asia By Karl Taro Greenfeld Hedonistic expats: Fear, drugs and soccer in Asia (02/02/98) Browse the Feature archives		APRES MOI, DE LUGE _\|_ page 2 of 2 Today I went to the second and final run of the men's single luge, held at a venue called "Spiral" on a mountain 40 minutes outside Nagano, while my father rocketed off on the pointy-nosed train to Tokyo ($50 one way) to meet Emiko. (He actually did see her this time; they had a great time and filled in a few blank branches on the skeletal family tree.) It was about 28 degrees up there, so I bought a can of hot Kirin wine -- they're very big on hot canned drinks here, which isn't surprising in the vending-machine capital of the world. I made my way up the course through the crowd, which, like that at most events I've been to, was overwhelmingly Japanese. The organizers cover the snow at these alpine events with straw, but people in street shoes are constantly falling down all around you. I stopped at a spot that looked like it would have a view of two sections of the course. Luge is a kind of toboggan on which the contestant (or contestants) lies on his back and steers with his feet. It's one of the most dangerous events at the Olympics -- they didn't want to introduce it in 1964, and a rider was in fact killed that year. It's a very weird event to watch in person, because you don't actually see anything except for a half-second blur of a maniac aiming his crotch at ice walls at 80 mph. This event gives a whole new meaning to the expression "balls out." The course itself is a cross between a roller coaster and a frozen irrigation ditch -- a 922-meter-long rectangular tube of ice that snakes its way down and up and around the face of a mountain. At its narrowest, it's only about four feet wide and two feet deep, but on the turns on the steepest part of the course, it's an eight-foot-high vertical wall -- and they use most of that eight feet, too. When you're watching from the middle part of the course, you don't see anything for 20 or 30 seconds. Then you hear a peculiar low rumbling sound up the run, and an instant later a one-man express train blasts by two feet away from you. The force is awe-inspiring. After the forerunner blasted past me, I dashed to the other side of the path to find him on a lower stretch of the course. It was 100 yards away, and I only had to go a few feet, but by the time I got there, he had already vanished -- that's how fast they go. On television you get the entire view of the run, and sled-mounted cameras are scarily intense, but nothing prepares you for the adrenalin needle of pure speed in the heart of seeing a man shooting past you inches away at freeway speed. Little shrieks were torn from the lips of middle-aged Japanese ladies as they watched. The favorite, German Georg Hackl, is one of the all-time great lugers -- he's won two gold medals in a row. He entered the second day's runs with a big lead over an Italian, Armin Zoeggeler, and his arch rival, Austrian Markus Prock, whom he beat in Lillehammer by 13 thousandths of a second -- the closest finish in history. There was no suspense this year -- he won in a cakewalk, more than half a second faster than the runner-up, Zoeggeler. But there isn't a whole lot of visual drama to the duel between contestants when you see it live -- they all go by at what appears to be identical speed, and the suspense only comes when you look at the clock after the run to see who's the leader. All in all, one live luge experience was enough for me. Still, if the Winter Games are all about gravity and inertia -- falling, gliding, controlling impersonal force rather than creating it -- luge, with its sheer maniac express-train force, is one of the most hellbent-for-the-bottom events. Tomorrow is my dad's last day here. We're going to cross our fingers, hope the weather gods and shuttle-bus potentates smile and embark on the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Saku up to the icy slopes of Happo-one in Hakuba, to watch some skiing -- one of the Games' glamour events, the men's combined downhill. SALON \| Feb. 10, 1998