Canada's insider blog

Would the next Pierre Lueders please step up.

Sure you can watch a winter Olympic sport on TV – and it’s cool, what with high-def and all. But let’s be clear: the only way to really GET it is to experience it with your own eyes, ears, nose, rattling bones and tightening sphincter.

That’s the thinking behind the Olympic Experience Progam at the Whistler Sliding Centre. The WSC hosted the sliding events at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, and continues to do outreach in the form of offering regular folks a chance to hurtle down the track.

The program kicked off last year with skeleton – a sport as scary as it sounds. (That’s the one where you go head-first.) Some 500 newbies suited up, took some classroom training and then got down to business, pulling astronaut-calibre Gs through the famed Thunderbird turn.

Of all the thoughts that occurred to participants, we doubt this was among them: You know, that was fun, but I’d sure like to go 20% faster.

But that’s what is in store this winter because the Sliding Centre has added bobsleigh to the mix.

As with skeleton, you book in advance, report to the facility on the southeast slope of Blackcomb Mountain, take a brief dry land orientation and git ‘er done. (Starting point for newbies is around half-way up the track.) Happily, a professional driver steers the sled. And you get to sit facing forward, getting to know the guy or gal in front of you very well. Expect to hit speeds that would get you pulled over on any highway in Canada.

The Sliding Centre is open now and closes March 25. The public program runs from December through March. Bobsleigh costs $149 per person.