The Sport and Its History
The Cresta Run and the SMTC were founded by devotees of sledding (tobogganing in British parlance) who adopted a head-first technique of racing down an icy run, as opposed to the feet-first supine and somewhat faster luge race. Both evolving sports were natural extensions of the invention of steerable sleds during the early 1870s by British guests of the Kulm hotel in St. Mortitz. These initial crude sleds were developed almost accidentally—as bored well-to-do gentlemen naturally took to intermural competition in the streets and byways of twisty mountainous downtown St. Moritz hazarding each other and pedestrians alike. This gave impetus to a desire to steer the sleds, and soon runners and a clumsy mechanism evolved to allow just that along the longer curving streets of the 1870s. This also allowed higher speeds on the longer runs. Local sentiments varied, but eventually complaints grew vociferous and Kulm hotel owner Caspar Badrutt built the first natural ice run for his guests, as he had worked hard to popularize wintering in the mountain resort, and did not want to lose any customers to ennui, nor his workforce to injury from errant sleds on the streets.
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