Can you outrun a Zamboni?
How fast do Winter Olympics athletes go?A writer for The Wall Street Journal took a radar gun to the Vancouver games and made some interesting discoveries:
- One of the women’s bobsled team’s reached 91 miles per hour (mph)
- Thomas Morgenstern went 59 mph in ski jumping
- Christopher Del Bosco reached 54 mph in men’s ski cross
- Romed Baumann reached 53 mph in men’s giant slalom
- Shani Davis reached 36 mph in the 1,500 meter speed skate
- Zhifeng Sun had a top speed of 31 mph in the women’s snowboard halfpipe
- Torin Koos reached 21 mph in men’s cross-country skiing
- Hockey players skate at 14 to 20 mph
- A Zamboni operates at 11 mph
- Kevin Martin slides down the curling ice at 8 mph
The Journal provides no speeds for any specific downhill skiers, though it puts them at “about 80 miles per hour.” Reed Albergotti, author of the Journal article, does not mention the speeds of racers in the skier cross or snowboard cross events. The Bend Bulletin, for perspective, reports that racers in the parallel grand slalom typically reach “more than 40 miles per hour.”
An article by scholars from the University of Vermont, published in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, says that helmets protect against direct impact for speeds up to 15 miles per hour, while recreational skiers (and riders?) typically achieve 25 to 30 mph on open, groomed slopes–but less than 15 mph in terrain park and in glades.