A luge is a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleds supine (face up) and feet-first. Steering is done by flexing the sled's runners with the calf of each leg or exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat. Luge is also the name of the sport which involves racing with such sleds. It is a competition in which these sleds race against a timer.
Luge, like the skeleton, and the bobsled, originated in the health-spa town of St Moritz, Swit...
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A luge is a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleds supine (face up) and feet-first. Steering is done by flexing the sled's runners with the calf of each leg or exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat. Luge is also the name of the sport which involves racing with such sleds. It is a competition in which these sleds race against a timer.
Luge, like the skeleton, and the bobsled, originated in the health-spa town of St Moritz, Switzerland, in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, through the endeavours of hotel entrepreneur Caspar Badrutt. Badrutt successfully sold the idea of winter resorting, as well as rooms with food, drink, and activities. His more adventurous English guests began adapting delivery boys' sleds for recreation, which led to collisions with pedestrians as they sped down the lanes and alleys of the village. This had two outcomes: in the short term the guests began to devise methods of steering the sleds, and so invented the skeleton (head first, prone),...
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