1 . Tobogganing, or sledding (雪橇), likely comes before the colonization of North America. Records show that Canada’s First Peoples used small sleds to transport their belongings and food between camps, Raymond Flower writes in The History of Skiing and Other Winter Sports. But modern-day sled races can trace their origins back to the Swiss Alps in the late 1800s when British tourists decided to race in wooden luges (a sled used by one person) that locals had used to travel through snow. The origin is debatable in snowy northern New York, however, where there $ evidence that Albany held bobsled (a sled used by two or more people) races as early as 1885.
Wherever they began, sled races quickly became popular. The famous Cresta Run, named after the Swiss town near the base of its course, was built in 1885 using snowbanks. The first organized competition was in 1898, hosted by the first bobsled club in nearby St.Moritz (a city in Switzerland). It was then that sledding began to separate from the luge to include two new sports: bob sledding, and skeleton sledding (俯式雪橇).
Cresta Run is considered the birthplace of the skeleton, a particularly daring form of sledding. Unlike the luge, where competitors ride feet-first on a sled with metal runners, the skeleton sledding is a steel sled with a slim appearance. Riders lie down on the sled headfirst, then drop suddenly down an ice track. Bobsledding, meanwhile, involves teams of two to four in which the person in front controls directions and the player in back brakes when needed. It earned its name after competitors started swinging back and forth to speed up the sled.
Bobsledding initially overtook skeleton sledding in popularity, becoming one of a handful of sports played at the first Winter Games in 1924. The skeleton sledding was limited to the Cresta Run for decades because other bob runs around the world were not built for the steel skeleton sled. But in the 1970s, adjustments were made to both the skeleton and bob runs in order to include the event at future winter games.
1. What can we infer about Raymond Flower?| A．He is a writer. |
| B．He is good at sledding. |
| C．He invented the sledding race. |
| D．He set the first record of sledding. |
| A．Skeleton sledding runs on metal runners. |
| B．Skeleton sledding doesn’t have back brakes. |
| C．Riders on Skeleton sledding sled with their feet. |
| D．Skeleton sledding needs players to lie down on it headfirst. |
| A．Its special shape. |
| B．Its speed. |
| C．Its steel runners. |
| D．Its unsuitable adjustments. |
| A．Why is sledding so popular? |
| B．How did sledding develop in Switzerland? |
| C．What are sledding adventures about? |
| D．How did people kill time in North America? |
