The various skeleton events wrapped up on Sunday, the Brits winning two of the three golds, Austria making away with the other, and the Germans sweeping the silvers and bronzes. However, fixating on the medal count obscures the most important contest of all: Who had the best helmet?
As the controversy involving Ukrainian slider Vladyslav Heraskevych suggests, skeleton helmets, like hockey goalie masks or Formula 1 helmets, are a part of the sport's aesthetic—and thus, political—culture. This is something to consider when you are choosing your sliding sport: Lugers may get to go feet-first, but they do not get painted helmets because, for whatever reason, they refuse to paint over the visors. What lugers gain in perceived safety, they lose in their ability to look sick as shit. Imagine foregoing the opportunity to look like this:
Befitting the name of the sport, skeleton helmet designs tend toward faces, many of them spooky. Perhaps it is more soothing to have two pairs of eyes facing your fate.
Sliders get bonus fashion points for their visors, which can either meld in with the rest of their helmet, or literally reflect the track they run on, turning the arena into part of their design.
With these busier designs, there's something to be said for a simple, solid block of color—
—but I personally favor well-executed abstract designs over either faces or solid colors.
A lot of the helmets in this style are very close in quality, but if I were to pick one to award bronze to, it would be Josip Brusić of Canada. His helmet shares a similar style to the two excellent Chinese ones shown above, but I love how he has incorporated both eyes and national iconography into the design without being obvious. The best of all worlds!
Despite preferring abstract designs, I award the silver medal for best helmet to Belgian slider Kim Meylemans. Meylemans's helmet does have the aura of one of those memes of a werewolf riding a motorcycle, or perhaps a van with a wizard smoking a blunt airbrushed on its side, but I maintain that this un-self-consciousness is what distinguishes Meylemans's helmet from the rest of the face-based ones.
Is some of my judgment biased by the fact that Meylemans is married to a rival slider, Brazilian Nicole Silveira? Art is subjective, and love can move mountains. The gold medal goes to Silveira.
