I have to admit that I am not very interested in winter sports, although I watched winter sports programs on TV several times as a young boy. During one of such reports, my uncle Lothar mentioned the famous saying attributed to Heinz Maegalein [1]: "They stood on the slopes and pistes." In German, the word pistes sounds like the past tense of the verb pissen - urinate. When I see the word skeleton, I don't think of anatomy, but immediately of dead people. And in my opinion, such facilities are as dangerous as these sports themselves. Nevertheless, we went there in the summer and looked at the facility. Much more interesting than the facility is the view you have from there; Nevertheless, we will first come to the facility itself.
The Wikipedia article “Sigulda bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track” [2] gives as coordinates: 57.152211°N 24.838586°E. And it tells us that sledging was already taking place there in 1887 – sledging in the 14th century would have been more interesting to me. The facility has already seen world championship races in luge, but in bobsleighing the facility is only suitable for mono and two-man bobsleighs and not four-man bobsleighs, so it is not suitable for world and European championships. To construct the facility, specialists from the Latgiproprom Design Institute traveled to Yugoslavia to study the facility in Sarajevo, before bringing in specialists from the Scientific and Technical Center for Sports Facilities in Leipzig (GDR) to calculate the trajectory of movement on the bobsleigh track [3]. The railway is a particular problem, as its tracks run about 50 m from the facility's starting tower and its vibrations had to be taken into account. The Sigulda bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track was completed in 1986. The facility was already in use during Soviet times, but also after Latvia's independence. I was unable to find out whether the renovation work announced in 2014 was carried out. In 2018, the Latvian government passed a resolution to grant the Swedish Olympic Committee the right to use the facility so that Stockholm could apply for the 2026 Winter Olympics [4]. These will, however, take place in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.
So what can you see? I couldn't find Treyden Castle in Turaida (I didn't visit it either), but you can see the Krimulda castle ruins with the cable car over the Gauja river and a lot of landscape. If you look closely, you can also see the path to Gutman's Cave (Gūtmaņa ala), but that's a story in itself.
Links and Annotations:
[1] Heinz Maegerlein (1911-1998) was a German sports journalist, radio reporter and television presenter. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Maegerlein
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigulda_bobsleigh,_luge,_and_skeleton_track
[3] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B0_%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D0%B3%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%B4%D0%B5
[4] https://www.thelocal.se/20180613/latvia-to-help-sweden-with-2026-winter-olympic-bid
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