Mirror mirror tell me the truth..

which steel is the cleanest. 

Just like in fairy tale your day to day routine as a luge athlete is dirty and precise when it comes to making the steel for next competition. And at the end of the day just like in fairy tale your sled be as shine as mirror. For the smallest girls in luge sport coach usually use words: "Sled supposed to be so clean that you can put on your lipstick". And its true young athletes can see it on first competitions.

How they grow up and how they do sleds now we asked current junior team members Kristens Putins, Kendija and Kristers Aparjodi. 

"Preparing the sled is really important, acurate and urgent process. You can be at gym doing squats 6 hours a day if you want but if your sled is not prepared properly results will be poor. If you dont clean steel after runs and dont make entire sled your blade become brown because of oxydation from melted ice. Steel has to be like mirror where to see yourself before start" explaining young athlete. "You can compare our work to jewelers. It is very precise work we do with steel."

"First thing is sandpapers. You can choose rough like real world grain of sand  or it can also be fine as tissue paper.You can't go too rough to steel with sandpaper. It can ruin your runs. You have to keep it whitout scratches. Every run make some scratches and there goes your time. If the track is not clear or can be some small rock or even grain from sand in track it leaves scratches. So every athlete have to make sure  after every run in competition there are no scratches on steel. So you get up after finish line, take your sled and go make it for next run." explain Kristers. 

In pictures you can see how it looks.  The wooden tool is to keep the angle straight between both blades. It can take hours to get it done.