Safety and Short Track Equipment Short Track Speed Skating can be a very dangerous sport because a lot of collisions and wipe outs happen, this is when multiple skaters obstruct, push or bump against each other and then a lot of them fall at high speeds on the ice. This is one of the reasons why there is equipment designed to prevent any fatal injuries or career changing acidents. The first piece of crucial equipment needed for short track skating are gloves, gloves are essential for protecting a skaters hands from their skating blades or other racer’s skating blades. On top of that, the left hand glove has rubber covers on the fingertips. This is for when a short tracker goes along a curve in the track and they will be able to use their hand as stability by leaning to their left hand side onto the fingertips. If the bottom of the hand touches the ice, the skater will fall and sometimes even crash into others. A helmet is also crucial and essential to short track skaters, this is so that when an incident does occur, a skater’s head is protected and they would proably not injure themselves too severly. The most important of all is the short tracker’s skates. The skates consists of the boots and the blades. NBC Olympics says that “Short track boots lace higher up the ankle than traditional skates and are constructed from fiberglass, graphite and Kevlar, using customized foot molds to help stabilize the foot and ankle around the corners. Socks are rarely worn.”. The boots need to be comfortable for the skater and they need to be quite compact around the feet so that it doesn’t result in any injuries. The second aspect of the skates is the blade, They are speciallly modified to maintain high speeds and keeping stable mobility in the turns. The blades are extremely sharp and are a little off center to make sure that the skater’s boot doesn’t touch the ice while turning and falll because of that.
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