Close Encounters

It's 23 below near the top of Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, N.Y., and U.S. lugers Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin are wearing skintight racing suits, perched atop a 2-ft.-wide sled. Martin sits behind Grimmette, legs straddling his teammate. "I've got no traction on my feet," yells Martin. Grimmette, like a longtime nanny, instantly wipes them down with his gloves. The pair, teammates for 10 years, alternate deep breaths. "All right, be aggressive," says Grimmette. "Yup," replies Martin. With that, the U.S.'s best-ever Olympic luge team shoots from the starting block. Now supine on the sled, they hit speeds of 80 m.p.h. on the icy track, Grimmette atop Martin the whole way down.

The Winter Olympics showcase some of the oddest-looking pairs in sports. Athletes endlessly tout the importance of chemistry, that unseen connection between teammates that boosts performance. Well, there's nothing unseen about the connections between the luge doubles. Or bobsledders: two- or four-person teams bunched together in a runaway rocket, heads buried in one another's backs as if expecting something terrible. Or the pairs figure skaters and ice dancers in their flashy outfits, bodies entwined, handling each other throughout their routines.

These athletes aren't conjoined just on the ice. Since most compete in low-revenue sports, the lugers, sledders and skaters often bunk up to save costs. Grimmette doubles as Martin's landlord, renting him a bedroom in his Lake Placid house; during the summer, a top Italian luge team, Gerhard Plankensteiner and Oswald Haselrieder, live and work together as forest rangers in Cortina. They share hotel rooms on the road and put in long hours prepping for competition. "We're like married couples," says Todd Hays, the top U.S. bobsled driver, sharing a sentiment echoed by dozens of athletes in these sports. Some skaters, in fact, do get hitched.

All that time in close quarters breeds a panoply of team dynamics--lasting friendships, near psychic synchronicity, petty sniping and, in the case of the skaters, love, marriage and divorce. "The codependency factor? It's through the roof," says Pavle Jovanovic, who lives in Calgary, Alta., with Steve Mesler and Brock Kreitzburg, his close friends and teammates in Hays' four-man bobsled. "I'm always telling [Mesler], Just because we live together, we don't have to do everything together all day. He tortures me." Hays is even more direct. "It's definitely a challenge just to keep from killing each other," he says.

In the bobsled, tensions often mount between the driver and the "brakeman," who helps push the sled at the start and stop it at the end--there's no actual braking on the course. "If you don't care for that person and you win, it's kind of a double-edged sword," says the U.S.'s top woman bob driver, former brakeman Shauna Rohbock. Last season she dropped a partner she couldn't stomach. "You're winning, and then you're like, 'I don't want her to do well.' But she was on the sled." How inconvenient.

1. What Obama Owes the Clintons
2. Viewpoint: What the California Gay Ruling Won't Do
3. How Healthy Is John McCain?
4. Behind the Bush-Obama Smackfest
5. The US Dilemma Over Chavez
6. India to America: Eat Less, Fatties
7. The World's Next Top Lama
8. Kids' Show Makes Spinach Cool
9. China's Heaviest Toll: Schoolchildren
10. Can Mexico's Drug Terror Be Stopped?

You will need to install or upgrade your Flash Player to be able to view this Flash content. Also, Javascript must be turned on.

Grab it! to put Quotes of the Day on your personal page or blog