Just recalling this wild moment in winter sports when Katie Tannenbaum, a skeleton slider from the U.S. Virgin Islands, struck a broom at top speed during a World Cup run in Igls, Austria. Brooms are regularly used to sweep snow off tracks on race days and officials said this particular broom was blown into the track by the wind. Katie is okay but her sled is “chunked”:
“I’ll save you all the sweeping puns. My helmet and mouth guard did their jobs wonderfully. My new white helmet has a tiny broom colored scratch for me to remember this day by (how could I forget?). And my jaw is a little tight. My sled, however, took on some serious damage. The carbon fiber pod that covers the underside of my sled has a big chunk missing and a crack running down the front-center. It’s pricey and will take a while to get a replacement, but it’s fixable.”
This wassn’t the first time a skeleton slider has punched through a broom. In 2015, Canadian Jane Channell was struck in the left shoulder by a broom that slipped out of a track worker’s hands at a World Cup event.