An Olympic fan favorite since the Winter Games began in 1924, bobsled features high-tech, torpedo-shaped sleds gliding through banked turns and fast straights on an ice-covered track. As few as one and as many as four athletes ride inside the sled, hoping to set the quickest time to reach the finish line at the bottom of the track.

The sport was invented in the Swiss Alps in the late 1800's, where the original sleds were made of wood. Today, the torpedo-shaped sleds are made mainly of fiberglass and steel.

Bobsled events at the Winter Olympics take place over two days. Each sled takes two runs per day, and the winner is the sled that completes all four runs in the quickest aggregate time.

Four bobsled events will take place at the Milan Cortina Games: four-man, two-man, two-woman and women's monobob (single rider).

The bobsled competition begins with women's monobob on Sunday, Feb. 15 and wraps up with final heats of four-man on Sunday, Feb. 22. Stay tuned on the NBC Olympics schedule page for updates.

Bobsled, skeleton and luge will take place at the Cortina Sliding Center in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. The new track, to be built specifically for the 2026 Winter Games, will hug the same mountain slope upon which the sliding sports took place during the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina. 

The slope is named after Italian bobsled legend Eugenio Monti. Decades before Shaun White launched off Olympic halfpipes as the "The Flying Tomato," Monti earn two Olympic gold medals as Il Rosso Volante, or, "The Flying Redhead."