Imagine you’re in a car and driving on an icy road at over 130 kph. Imagine your car skids and goes out of control. Imagine your car doesn’t have breaks but you still have to get it back in control without crashing.
Sounds impossible, right?
Now, imagine you’re not in a car but lying down on a small sled, face up and feet first, with no brakes and only a helmet for protection. Imagine hurtling down a slippery ice track at a speed of 130-140 kph with only your legs and shoulders to steer you.
Shiva Keshavan has been doing this for over 20 years. On Wednesday, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, he will commence his sixth Winter Olympics campaign in luge, often described as the fastest sport on ice. It’s the only sport in the Winter Olympics which is timed at a thousandth of a second.
Luge, as you might have figured, is a very dangerous sport. Athletes are travelling so fast on the sled that even small scrapes against the walls can cause burns through the fire-retardant rubberised suits. Apart from burns, Keshavan has suffered numerous injuries over the last two decades, including a broken foot, a compressed vertebra and a herniated disk.
There have also been deaths, as recent as the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, when Georgia’s Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, was propelled off the track and crashed into a steel pole. He was given CPR by the medical team on the site before being taken to a hospital, but doctors were unable to revive him.
“When you see it on TV, you don’t really understand the speed,” said Keshavan. “When you come and see luge live, that’s when you’ll realise what the actual speed is. It’s like a jet that comes in from a distance – you hear the sound long before you see it. You don’t even realise when the sled has come and gone. Seeing it live gives you a little kick.”
Technical track
The Alpensia Sliding Centre in Pyeongchang, which will host the luge event, is not as fast as the one in Vancouver but that’s not to say it isn’t challenging. “It’s a very technical track,” said Keshavan. “There are a couple of pretty tricky corners and combinations where there is potential for mistakes.”
The track was completed only a year ago, with the first test runs taking place last February, so there are still conflicting views within the luge community as to how best to manoeuvre certain curves and corners. “There is still room for error because people are still tentative about certain curves,” said Keshavan. “There are five hairpin-like turns – curves 4, 5, 8, 12, 14.”
Turns are one of the most physically strenuous sections of a luge lap because this is when the g-force, or gravitational force, increases. Lugers experience an average g-force of 3g during a run, which is equivalent to what astronauts experience in a space shuttle during launch and re-entry. On a luge track, it can even go as high as 5g, which is what Formula One drivers experience under heavy braking.
There are also certain corners where the Pyeongchang track first goes uphill and then downhill, as a result of which “you get that weightless sensation which is very strange for us”, said Keshavan, “because we get our bearings with the G force.”
When you feel weightless, that’s negative gs.
Apart from this, there a couple of quick combinations – short transitions between curves – on the track. There is also a chicane, which is a straight path with a couple of banks through which sliders have to find a straight line.
“It’s interesting – there are a lot of variables to it which have never been put together in this way in any other track in the world,” said Keshavan. “That’s what makes this track so challenging.”
This is why the first thing Keshavan did after arriving in Pyeongchang was to walk the entire length of the 1.344km track. “You see all the curves, the condition of the ice, you get a sense of how the track is going to react to your lines. You can tweak your lines, your steering accordingly.”
Ahead of the heats, Keshavan also does what he calls “mind runs”, where he visualises the entire track, with all the curves and its elements, in his mind. There are only a certain number of actual test runs you can do on the track without causing physical strain, but you can do as many mind runs as you want, he said.
“If you’re having problems with a particular corner, in practice you can’t physically repeat a corner. It’s just from start to finish. So if you just want to practice just one particular corner, with your mind runs you can do that.”
Through visualisation, you can also trick your mind. “For example, suppose a track is extremely fast and you aren’t able to cope with the reaction, so you visualise it even faster. Then when you actually do the run, it seems slower.”
Travelling with a coach
Keshavan also has a personal coach this time for the Olympics – a first – in former USA luger Duncan Kennedy. After coming on board post the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Kennedy has helped Keshavan put a lot of things into perspective.
“It’s made me realise how much I have missed a coach when I started off,” the Indian said. “You need somebody to put the right pace in you, make you understand basic concepts, steer you in the right directions, remove your doubts. That’s a huge thing that plays on the mind of an athlete – doubts.”
Without a coach, the only way to learn is via trial and error, which obviously takes a lot of time. “It’s a longer learning curve and sometimes when you learn things the wrong way it takes more time to unlearn because that habit becomes second nature,” said Keshavan. “So, it’s great to have somebody you can trust and speak to.”
In the five Winter Olympics that Keshavan has participated in without a coach – because he couldn’t afford one – his best finish was 25th (out of 36 athletes) in Turin 2010. Hiring a coach costs anywhere between $20,000 to $ 30,000 (Rs 13 lakh to Rs 19 lakh) minimum annually. “I know there are some teams who are paying nearly half a million dollars (Rs 3.2 crore) annually to their coaches,” said Keshavan, who was able to afford Kennedy after managing to attract some sponsors ahead of Pyeongchang 2018.
Keshavan is entering these Games with six sponsors – his best ever tally in terms of support. He also received Rs 20 lakh from the Indian Sports Ministry under the Target Olympic Podium scheme in January – just two weeks before his final Olympic campaign.
It’s the same with media coverage, he said, which shoots up just in the build-up to the Games before fizzling out. “In the last three years, there was nothing,” said Keshavan. “That’s the time when it was needed. You need time to prepare, build equipment, do R&D, work on a specific part of your training. You need to be able to plan for it.”
India does not have a luge track, so most of Keshavan’s training takes place abroad. He has to pay for not only his own but also his coach’s flights and accommodation, along with his salary. In total, he needs about Rs 1 crore annually to sustain himself but that has hardly been possible to raise, even with six sponsors.
“Through sponsorships, I covered just over half, maybe 60% of it,” he said. What about the rest? “There was no rest. The things I couldn’t afford, I couldn’t afford. I had to cut costs for equipment, clothing, accommodation, travelling…
“Luckily with Duncan, he understands how it works in India by now. Otherwise it is difficult to find somebody who will work with you if you don’t give them a 4-5-year contract,” he added.
Incredible career
With the kind of resources and support that was available to him over the last 20 years, it’s incredible to even think Keshavan is competing in his sixth Olympics. Twenty years ago, in Nagano, Japan, a 16-year-old Keshavan was the only Indian participating in the 1998 Winter Olympics. He was the only Indian who had ever qualified for the Games in the sport and also the youngest luge Olympian in history.
Since then, he has never missed a Winter Olympics and has been the only Indian participant in two of them. Only Leander Paes has taken part in more Olympic Games – seven – than Keshavan. While he has never challenged for medals at the Olympics or the World Cup circuit, Keshavan is the reigning Asian champion and holds the continental speed record – 134.4 kph.
Despite announcing in December that Pyeongchang would probably be his last race, Keshavan said the fact that this was going to be his final Olympics did not hit him till he arrived in South Korea. “I never really thought of it,” he said. “But now speaking to other athletes and seeing their reactions, with people coming and taking pictures with me, it puts things into perspective.”
Keshavan’s first training run in Pyeongchang is scheduled for Wednesday at 7.30 pm local time (4 pm IST). The 36-year-old will be watched live by at least 40-50 Indian spectators who he has personally invited.
“It’s my last race, so I told people to come and watch while they still can,” he said, laughing.