Words & Photos by Patrick Switzer...
"oi! I love the feeling of riding in this track. Safety is definitely number one. The track has light beams to track split times down the course to see what section your doing well in. So sweet. This tops the list, as the most mentally challenging place I have ever skated."
So the update on Danny is that he's is doing okay. We checked in at the hospital to find him with 10 stitches to his chin and upper lip. He was glad to see the group of us and anxious to hear how the day went. He is suffering from a broken jaw, possibly a broken tailbone and a concussion. Danny could only remember moments before his crash and hours after our visit we heard from his parents he had no recollection of our visit. He was amazed to see the wheel with axle still in place broken from the hanger.
God bless Danny. To the master of the bob-track we're thinking of you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEZ9AxKKR6E
In total we are 11 longboarders from 5 different nations now:
Fee Bücheler (GER)
Hartmut Hack Olpp (GER)
Sophie Friedel (GER)
Martin Siegrist (SUI)
Samy Cantieni (SUI)
Yvon Labarthe (SUI)
Ramon Königshausen (SUI)
Patrick Switzer (CDN)
Benjamin Malherbe (RSA)
Manuel Ruiz (FRA)
Danny Strasser (GER)
As Danny put it best, riding in the bobsled track is not without it's fear.
Learning to ride the lower section definitely imposed a new sense of balance like a pendulum as you would ride in a concrete skate park bowl. The difference your in a metre wide shoot on a longboard going +50km/hr. The last runs of the day we were pushing in hard from the junior starting point getting a feel for more speed in the corners and flowing the transition safely.
At the same time as we were testing out the waters today, the German Olympic bobsled riders we also training. Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to meet them, but they sure looked fast at +110km/hr from the top.
Tomorrow we go higher.
