“What’s It Like…” Roundup: Jon Montgomery

Earlier this week, we recapped the performance of Maëlle Ricker, one of the Olympic athletes we interviewed for OWL’s recent “What’s It Like…” feature. Let’s keep it going by taking a look at Canadian skeleton athlete Jon Montgomery (pictured above)!

Now, if you’ve seen any skeleton at the Games, you know that athletes race super-fast down the bobsleigh run — only they do it headfirst… on a sled. In the feature, we asked Jon what it’s like to ride headfirst. Here’s what he said:

“Going headfirst down the skeleton run with your chin just above the ice surface as it passes underneath your sled at 140 km/h (87 mph) is like nothing else on Earth. We are not always aware of how fast we are travelling because of the level of concentration required to navigate each corner successfully. What you do feel is pressure. It pushes you into your sled and your face into the ice when you are rising up into a corner, and as the sled begins to fall back down, the pressure dissipates. We can pull as much as five times the gravitational force of the Earth — so my head feels five times as heavy!”

Click here to see how Jon raced to skeleton gold at the Vancouver 2010 Games. I like watching that video (and looking at the picture at the top of the page) knowing how hard he’s pushing just to keep his head up. That takes serious skill and determination!

Talk to you tomorrow next week, OWL readers!

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com