Like bobsleigh, but unlike luge, the race begins with a running start from the opening gate at the top of the course.

[1] The skeleton originated in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as a spinoff of the tobogganing sport pioneered by the British on the Cresta Run.

The sport of skeleton can be traced to 1882, when English soldiers constructed a toboggan track between the towns of Davos and Klosters in Switzerland.

In 1884, Major William Bulpett, with the backing of winter sports pioneer and Kulm hotel owner Caspar Badrutt, constructed the Cresta Run, the first tobogganing track of its kind in St. Moritz.

This opened the door to other national skeleton competitions including the Austrian championship held the following year.

[8] Popularity in the sport has grown since the 2002 Winter Olympics and now includes participation by some countries that either do not or cannot have a track because of climate, terrain or monetary limitations.

Athletes from such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, South Africa, Argentina, Iraq, Israel, Mexico, Brazil, and even the Virgin Islands have become involved with the sport in recent years.

This championship is a "paper" race, based only on the times in the regularly scheduled World Cup event, with the athletes representing a different continent excluded.

Unlike all other IBSF-sponsored races, the World Championships use a two-day, four-heat format, with rankings determined by total time for all four heats.

All countries are entitled to send up to three athletes to the Junior World Championships, subject to the requirement that each entrant must have finished at least three IBSF sanctioned competitions on at least two tracks in the previous two years.

[11] The 2017–18 Junior World Championships were held on 25 January 2018 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and the winners were Anna Fernstädt of Germany and Nikita Tregubov of Russia.

[16] The skeleton event in the Winter Olympics uses the same two-day, four-heat format as the World Championships, but team quotas are significantly smaller.

In addition, three quota spots are reserved for countries whose continent did not receive any representation based on this assignment procedure.

National Olympic Committees may send athletes other than the ones whose rankings earned the quota spot, but the athletes chosen must be ranked in the top 60 (for men) or top 45 (for women) on the IBSF list and meet similar experience requirements to those that apply to the World Cup.

[17] However, IBSF rule 4.1 provides that, for the purposes of determining the top 60 (or top 45) qualification, lower-ranking athletes from countries which have already received a full quota are "cleaned" from the list before an athlete's ordinal ranking is determined[11] This had the effect of allowing continental representatives for Africa into the 2018 games, as they would otherwise have been too low on the ranking list to qualify (notably, Nigerian slider Simidele Adeagbo was ranked 74th before cleaning,[18] but was in the top 45 after application of rule 4.1).

Most notably, Nino Bibbia, a fruit and vegetable merchant from St. Moritz, Switzerland, took Olympic gold at the 1948 event.

[6] With the advent of the first artificially refrigerated track in 1969 at Königssee/Berchtesgaden, Germany, athletes are currently able to practice the sport regardless of weather conditions.

In 1902, Arden Bott added a sliding seat to help athletes shift their weight forward and backward, a feature that is no longer included on modern sleds.

Current Olympic champion:  South Korea (KOR) Yun Sung-bin  Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) Nikita Tregubov  Great Britain (GBR) Dominic Parsons Current Olympic champion:  Great Britain (GBR) Lizzy Yarnold  Germany (GER) Jacqueline Lölling  Great Britain (GBR) Laura Deas Both skeleton and its sister sport, bobsledding, have been associated with traumatic brain injury, a phenomenon known as "sled head".