A sport reserved for steel-willed speed demons, skeleton features athletes racing head-first down an icy track at speeds in excess of 80 mph. Individuals ride chest-down atop a small sled, with their face just inches from the track's surface. Steering is accomplished mainly by slight movements of the torso and legs, shifting weight to match the contours of the track.

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

Three skeleton events will take place at the Milan Cortina Games: men's individual, women's individual and, for the first time ever at the Winter Olympics, a mixed team competition will be held. In the mixed team event, two athletes from the same nation (one man and one woman) take consecutive runs down the track, hoping to set the quickest aggregate time.

The skeleton competition begins with the men's individual event on Thursday, Feb. 12 and wraps up with the mixed team event on Sunday, Feb. 15. 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."