Building a

Record Breaker

Now that I had a good idea about what it is

like to shoot head first down a mountain and

had learned a little about the do’s and don’ts

of tobogganing, what I really needed was a

supersled that would be fast enough to take

the world record.

NEEDED to see what Nick Hamilton

and his team at Sheffield Hallam

University had come up with. At a

workshop at the University, Nick explained

that what we needed to create was something

that was heavy enough to be stable (the Cresta

buckets weighed around 50 kilos, remember)

when it was travelling downhill at speed. Ski

slopes look beautifully smooth from a distance,

but up close they are scattered with lumps of

icy snow created by the tracks of the machines

that are used to groom the pistes, as well as

small bumps that reflect the fact that the snow

is lying over a slope that is part of the mountain

terrain. No ski slope is ever as smooth as the

icing on a cake, and that’s why skiers ski with

their knees bent. They can transfer their weight

more easily when they flex their knees, and

bending their knees also allows them to use

their legs as shock absorbers to deal with the

bumps. Absorbing minor impacts by bending

I

Top: The raking teeth

used as brakes were

ultimately sited further

back on the chassis, to

take advantage of my

weight bearing down on

them, and operated using

a bicycle chain linkage.

Bottom: This kind of

flag is normally attached

to aircraft air speed

indicators or the tips of

missiles – I wouldn’t be

going quite that fast!

230    world’s fastest sled