The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-02-23

NyAASc VI So1AS 4AOh
 gives him a brief moment to collect
 his dazed senses before he is tearing
 round the Rise. low. and acute bank
 on the left. An instant later, HtearlIy,
 he is on Battledore, bank also on the
 left, which completes the right angle
 turn to the course begun by the Rise.
 But Battledore is ended almost before
 it is begun, and machine and rider are forthwith on Shuttlecock, the crucial
 part os the whole track.
 ShuttIecock lies on the right and re-
 verses the right angle turn just made
 in the course. It is bank on which
 the rider must take a fall unless he is
 master of all his nerves and has al-
 ready had good deal of practice. The
 bank is forty yards long and rider after
 rider flies into space at the acute points
 of its shoulder" Shuttlecock passed,
 however, he reaches a immaterial bank
 on the left, called Stream Corner, and
 the Straight is before him. The
 Straight is 300 yards long, and steep.
 On it's surface many race is lost and
 won. speeds having been timed there
 which averaged over sixty-eight miles
 an hour. It ends with Bulpett's Cor
 ner on the left, not very dagerous, and
 named after one of the originators of
 the Cresta. Thereafter the rider has little time for sensation. Bulpett's Corner gives him a toss to the right, an instant later, Scylla, on the right, has cast him to Charybdis on the left, and he is roaring down the last fall. or leap-as steep as Church Leap and longer than it but no horror of pranks
 below. At the bottom of this he strikes cotton thread which stops an electric stop-elock, similarly started by a thread ten yards from the beginning. There after he must jam his steel toe-caps, with their great teeth, into the ice sur face of the rise for all he is worth, or at it's summit he will take an unwel-
 come aerial flight. The Cresta is not allowed to be rid- den until a minimum depth of six feet of snow is lying ready to break falls off the course. Nothing will break the
 force of a fall on the course, for the surface is pure ice, made by nightly l flooding and sweeping of the track The least soft spot on a bank makes riding 8 wanton temptation of Provt, | dence, hence these banks which are | facing the sun are shielded by tarpau- lines spread on poles. On big race days l the riding begins at A. M., for the surface seldom allows riding after noon.
 Riding the Cresta is no child's play.
 Eighty seconds for the fourteen hun, II of bo ie,, ,I The writer, having taken a dozen falls | in four days, knows that every action on the riders part is instinetive rather | than calculated, and that he is usually Iwithout full comprehension of what has happened until several seconds af- ter he has fallen or ridden to the end, Steering is done by balance, with the I steel toe rakes, and by sliding the body | back so that the weight is all on the rear bow of the runners. A strong pull on the fornt of the runners will then l swing" the machine. by causing the grooves to ""btte" the ice track, which alone insures safety on a bank like Shuttlecock. Occasionally a woman | dares the ride, and often she outdis- | tances the men. .-s4.... $. <. ! It Is mainly skilful balancing, over and above moderate muscle, which brings safety instead of disaster. 'Gres- ta funk' is well known and by nc
 means scoffed-at sensation of those who ride: but, as In many another dangerous feat, this accompanying fear Is what most conpels one to return tc the test. Personally, although on other
 occasions I have been in several tight places, with injury and possible death
 las the outcome, the Cresta more than
 these has inspired. the most acute sen. sations os fear. Yet I would try il
 again tomorrow, if fortune would lead me back to the biting cold and tn. clouded sky under which the ice of the
 course glints in the snow below old St | Mn,esf1 (Sbnrfb