The evolution of sports equipment at the Olympic Winter Games

On 4 February 2022, the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 will officially get underway. Over the following two weeks, the best winter sports athletes in the world will take to the snow and ice equipped with state-of-the-art gear that will help unlock their elite abilities.

From fibreglass sleighs to unique biathlon rifles, technology at the Olympics Winter Games has come a long way since the days of wooden skis and stopwatches.

Here are a few examples of such evolution.

Bobsleigh

Bobsleigh has been a part of the Winter Olympics since the inaugural Games at Chamonix in 1924, though there is a gargantuan chasm in the quality of the equipment that the athletes wore in France almost 100 years ago compared to the gear that will be on display in Beijing.

The first toboggans were made of wood but were soon replaced by steel sledges that would come to be known as 'bobsleighs' in reference to how crews would 'bob' back and forth to increase the speed of the sleigh on the straightaways.

As you can see from the image above, these 'original' Olympic bobsleighs offered little in the way of protection, and athletes weren't exactly well-guarded either!

Fast forward to Beijing 2022, and the sleighs that will tear down the track at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre are modern marvels compared to their ancestors.

Today's sleighs are designed to be as light as possible and combine light metals, steel runners, and an aerodynamic composite body made from fibreglass or carbon fibre, or a mixture of both. Per the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, a world-class bobsleigh can cost anywhere between £25,000-£70,000, and is the product of countless hours of research and development. For example, the runners of a sleigh (the pieces of steel that are attached to the bottom of the sleigh to enable it to run along the ice) alone can cost between £4,000 and £10,000!

Skiing

The humble ski has undergone numerous changes and improvements throughout its history. While there is still debate over when exactly the ski was invented (the oldest pair of skis in recorded history, discovered in Vis, Russia, are roughly 6,000 years old), we know that the skis used at the first Olympic Winter Games were made primarily from wood.

In 1950, American engineer Howard Head created an aluminium-alloy ski, with the design later improved upon by French world champion Alpine skier Emile Allais, who designed a riveted aluminium ski. At the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, Jean Vuarnet (FRA) won gold in the men's downhill competition on Allais' ski.

Modern skis now use a combination of different woods for their core construction, but there's also just a few more additional materials that today's designers get to pick from when building skis. These include: fibreglass, carbon fibre and titanal, which are used as composite layers in skis; and ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE), which is what the base of skis are typically made from. And then of course there's the topsheet and sidewall to consider; the former helps protect the inside of the ski from water damage, while the latter determines how torsionally rigid a ski is.

Needless to say, the skis we will see in competition at Beijing 2022 have been specifically designed to their athlete's requirements and will be integral to their success at the Games.

Biathlon rifles

Biathlon made its Olympic debut at the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, but an antiquated form of the sport had already featured at the 1924, 1928, 1936, and 1948 Winter Olympics: the military patrol. The event consisted of athletes competing in cross-country skiing, ski mountaineering and rifle shooting.

As the name would suggest, the 'athletes' taking part in the military patrol were soldiers who used rifles; from 1960 to the 1977 Olympics in Innsbruck, biathlon shooting was conducted with full-bore rifles of any bore up to 9mm, and despite no longer being known as "military patrol", most competitors (and indeed the organisers) were active military members.

As is the case with most sporting equipment, biathlon rifles have been steadily improved upon and must now be built to comply with technical regulations of a competition sanctioning body (such as the International Biathlon Union).

The rifles themselves are complex pieces of equipment, built with unique ergonomic stocks (including a distinct thumb rest, allowing the thumb of the firing hand to rest pointing upwards), non-magnified diopter rear and globe front sights, and a shooting sling.

The total weight of the unloaded rifle has to be between 3.5 to 7.5 kg, though most athletes use the Anschütz 1827 Fortner, which weighs between 3.7 to 4.0kg. The preference for a lighter rifle among today's biathletes represents a marked change from the 80s, when it was a common belief that a rifle needed to be somewhat heavy in order to be stable enough to shoot accurately.

But after Glen Eberle (USA) introduced a lighter stock design at the 1984 Winter Olympics - one that he had designed after consulting NASA scientists - athletes quickly saw the benefits of the substantial weight saved over a 20km race; not to mention how the ergonomic design of Eberle's stock actually improved shooting accuracy.

Thus, Eberle's design became the blueprint for today's biathlon rifles.

Figure skating skates

Figure skating was first contested at the 1908 London Summer Games and again in 1920 in Antwerp before being permanently transferred to the program of the Olympic Winter Games. In these early Olympic years of the sport, athletes would wear figure skating boots made by hand from many layers of leather; these boots were thin and supple, and reached the mid-calf.

But as the sport developed and became more athletic - with competitors continuing to push the boundaries and adding new moves (like spinning jumps) to their routines - so too did the figure skating boot evolve.

The boots became more rigid to support the foot and ankle for explosive jumps, and have a lower cut to enable the foot to flex. But with the increased rigidity of the boot, a good fit became essential, and today skaters typically wear custom boots that are tinkered with by a skate technician.

Today's boots are typically made from synthetic materials with heat-modifiable linings; these boots are lighter than their leather counterparts, easier to break in, and just as stable. Figure skating boots are also immediately recognisable by their distinctive toe picks at the front of the blade, which itself is made from tempered carbon steel, though aluminium and stainless steel blades are also increasing in popularity.

Curling stones

Curling first originated in the 16th century in Scotland, which makes it one of the oldest team sports in the world. Those early games were played on frozen ponds and lochs, using primitive curling stones made from different types of materials and rocks from the regions of Perth and Stirling. These early curling stones, known as 'loofies', didn't have any handles, but they did have indentations for the thumb and fingers.

In the 1600s, stones with handles were introduced, and over the centuries the stones were tinkered with (including the introduction of a concave bottom in the late 19th century) until the World Curling Federation standardised the weight and dimensions of the stone for use in international competition.

Each curling stone has a circumference of 36 inches and a height of 4.5 inches, and the stones used at the Olympic Games weigh 19.1 kg (44 lbs).

The granite used to make curling stones is exceedingly rare; so rare, in fact, that there are only two quarries in the world where it can be found: the Trefor Granite Quarry in Wales, and the Scottish island of Ailsa Craig.