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It’s amazing how fast you can become a passionate superfan of a sport that five minutes before, you thought was called luge. Turns out the head-first hurtle down a drainpipe of ice is called skeleton. Turns out the feet-first version, luge, also has a doubles category, where one elite athlete lies on top of another, and they both go down feet first; this isn’t relevant to skeleton, but it feels deeply relevant, in some mysterious and compelling way, to the human condition. Turns out the UK is better at skeleton than any other nation on Earth. Who knew?
Even before Matt Weston had won his solo gold medal last Friday, skeleton was easily the most watchable sport of the Winter Olympics, because the commentary was so soothing. Tangle with snowboarding and you’re going to hear a lot of unfamiliar words – grabs, spins, flips and rail manoeuvres – accompanied by the modifiers “spectacular” and “ooh”, and commentators won’t tell you what any of it means because they’re too excited, even though that is their one job.
Skeleton, by contrast, is almost zen: just watch the times. Green times are good; red times are bad. Just watch the little numbers. Don’t worry about the ice, and whether or not the sled is hitting the sides, even though I am medium sure that is bad.
Wondering, after GB’s second gold medal, whether there was anything in our national character that would make us particularly suited to skeleton, I ended up watching the athlete’s-eye-view on TikTok. Is it very scary? Are we great at weathering tremendous, impotent fear, surrendering to the fates, for the same, centuries-embedded environmental reasons that Canadians are good at skating? The skeleton riders’ POV, it turns out, is very much like the spectators’ – a lot of ice, a bit of juddering, some downhill, some slight uphill, ending with your head buried in a foam mattress.
Mixed skeleton has more dimensions – you’re an expert now, having got your head around watching the times, and you can concentrate on the bit at the end, where they hug. Are they really overflowing with mutual respect, or does one wish the other would pull their finger out, and what effect would that have on the aerodynamics, anyway? It must surely depend a bit on whether they walk off with a gold medal, which – guess what – Tabby Stoecker and Matt Weston did. It’s a love story purer than figure skating, because they danced with terror. Or maybe when you’re gold-standard, it’s not that scary. Who knows?
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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