Antoine finds feel for curve
Sochi medalist solving track
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – It took 10 training runs but maybe, just maybe, skeleton athlete Matt Antoine has solved the perplexing Curve 2 at the Olympic Sliding Centre.
“In that last training run I was able to get it,” Antoine said Wednesday. “It’s the first time I was like, ‘Oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like when you get it correct.’ ”
With the first two competition heats scheduled for Thursday, Antoine’s “aha” moment couldn’t have come at a better time. The bronze-medal winner at the 2014 Sochi Games is going to have to improve on his training run times in order to reach the podium again.
In six official training heats – he also had four paid sessions before official training began – Antoine was ranked fifth, 11th, 18th, 12th, eighth and 10th. He was anywhere from 0.35 of a second to 1.11 seconds off the fastest time.
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re hurtling down an ice track face-first on a sled at speeds around 80 mph, it’s a significant gap.
“It’s been frustrating this week, for sure,” Antoine said. “I won’t deny that. My training has been pretty up and down. I’ve been struggling quite a bit through Curve 2, so I was really happy with that (last) run, even though the time (51.92 seconds)
wasn’t anything spectacular.
“The big focus was Curve 2 and I can honestly say after 10 training runs that was the first time I got it right. It’s nice having that little bit of confidence going into race day. Because if you’re going into race day guessing at it still, it’s a bit of a roll of the dice.
“Now that I know what it’s supposed to be and how it feels, I feel a lot better about taking that into the competition.”
Antoine, 32, who grew up in Prairie du Chien, Wis., but lives and trains in Phoenix, isn’t the only sliding athlete who has struggled to figure out the treacherous curve.
Corners near the top of the track, Antoine said, are typically gentle and rolling and are entered and exited at relatively low speeds, before gravity takes over and the sleds turn into rockets on rails.
“There’s never the risk of hitting the top of the roof in the corner at those kind of speeds,” he said. “But the way Curve 2 here is shaped, even the good line, you’re going to get very close to the roof.
“You’re kind of playing with the edge of disaster pretty much through that entire corner. You’re getting really high and then when you’re coming out you’re getting really close to the exit wall.
“It took a lot of time for us to figure it out. I think it took me longer than everyone else to figure it out.”
Curve 9 on what Antoine described as a technical track also has been causing problems for many of the sliding athletes.
“I think it’s definitely a track where it’s going to be tough for an athlete to have four really clean, consistent runs,” he said. “But the athletes that can at least have the cleanest four are going to be the ones that are in the best position to medal here.”
The men’s sliding competition consists of four heats, two Thursday and two Friday.
Antoine has been disappointed with his race results this season; he’s ranked eighth on the World Cup circuit. And as frustrated as he was with his earlier training runs, he was feeling better about his chances when he left the Olympic Sliding Center on Wednesday.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “The results have kind of been all over the place this year and they haven’t been the best, for sure. But I think all the pieces are there and it’s just going to be up to me to put it together on race day.”