The Fastest Sport On Earth

What's the fastest sport on earth without an engine? Well, nothing can catch a speed skier who can hit more than 150 miles an hour on skis.

Correspondent Scott Pelley talks to two of the world's best speed skiers, who have been rivals for more than a decade. Both have held the record as world's fastest man, and one, American Jeff Hamilton, is still the champion for the fastest crash in a non-motorized sport, at 151 miles and hour.

Skiing for speed is more like diving off a cliff than skiing: no turns, just vertical velocity, three-quarters of a mile in 15 seconds.

"Speed skiing is basically drag racing, you know?" says Hamilton. "Comparing drag racing to car racing, regular downhill skiing is two minutes, you know, terrain with bumps and turns. Speed skiing is straight down the hill. Fifteen seconds long. Zero to 150 in about 15 seconds."

Hamilton was the first man ever to push over the edge and break the barrier of 150 miles an hour. How does it feel?

"Every second, you're going faster than the second before. It's building, building momentum of acceleration. The wind is trying to rip you apart," says Hamilton. "The track isn't perfectly smooth. It's bumpy and rolly. So you're trying to hold it together, staying strong as you can and staying focused and just trying to make it to the finish line."

Why does he have to go 150 miles per hour on skis? "I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out," says Hamilton. "Some people say it's the speed. For me, I think it transcends speed. It's more of an addiction to pushing the limits of what humans can do. Speed is a component, pushing the envelope."

60 Minutes II met Hamilton in Squaw Valley, Calif., a fitting location since speed skiing started in America in the 1880s, when gold miners raced straight down the mountains near Lake Tahoe.

It's one of the only sports we can think of that demands the athlete hold his body as still as possible. Getting this tuck tight and right is the key because speed skiing is a battle with the wind.

"Once you get over 100, it starts to get difficult," says Hamilton. "The air is just putting so much pressure on your body and you're just trying to fight back -pierce the air and get through it as quick as you can."

"You talking a Category Five hurricane," says Pelley.

"Yeah, you are, you are, and you're not just surviving it, you're dominating it," says Hamilton.

Only a handful of skiers dominate, and Hamilton's been chasing one of them for years: Harry Egger.

"Harry and I came into the sport about the same time in 1990, and we've been battling, friendly, for I mean, literally 12, 13 years. We've had a great rivalry," says Hamilton. "In the Olympics, he fell and I got the bronze. And in 1995, I set the record. In '97, he almost had that record. And then in '99, when I crashed at Lazark, he was able to get his big record there. To get 154, I believe, it was miles per hour."

Egger is an Austrian who is now training for a new attempt at the world record. On a test track outside Salzburg, he slowed down just long enough to explain that when it comes to speed, he's got the bug.

"Speed is a virus," says Egger. "It's always faster, faster, faster. That's the life of a speed skier."

But to Egger's frustration, there seems to be a speed limit. For the last 10 years or so, speed skiing has been "stuck" in the mid 150s. To beat the barrier, Egger has convinced a sponsor, Red Bull, to spend about a million dollars to find the ultimate speed. 60 Minutes II went with Egger to Zurich, where his team of engineers is working in a wind tunnel at the University of Zurich.

Egger is wearing the standard speed skiing gear: aerodynamic fairings on his boots and hard hand shells to keep the wind from slipping through his fingers. That wind comes up as a breeze, then a gale and finally a hurricane at more than 130 miles an hour.

Egger's chief scientist, Charles Bienz, has designed missiles and racecars. He's measured Egger and digitized him. Bienz also found something that seems to be limiting human ski speed. It's wake turbulence, which creates drag, like air turbulence behind a plane.

It turns out the normal human backside isn't very good for aerodynamics. So Bienz drew on his missile experience and came up with a shell to smooth the air. It has an aerodynamic tail to eliminate the wake and there's even a parachute packed inside for the finish line.

It makes Egger look a little like an insect, and the shell has a few bugs of its own. Egger says that when it works, it's smooth like a car. But if it doesn't fit just right, he has to fight it as if he were riding a bull.

Egger's team is working on refinements, but some in the sport are asking whether it's fair to have a million dollars in research and development smoothing the way.

Pelley asked Hamilton, Egger's long-time rival. "A lot of people in this sport say he's cheating," says Pelley. "He's got the suit that makes him look like a cruise missile. He's got the parachute and all of that. A lot of people say that is not skiing. That's something else."

"But this transcends that. When you're trying to see who is the fastest person in the world and he's not trying to beat somebody," says Hamilton. "He's just trying to do something special. I think the equipment he uses is irrelevant. I think you should push the limits of air."

The limits of air are not the only factor, of course. The snow should be just right, slightly soft and as smooth as humanly possible. After they pull the grooming machines up, they use laser beams to find tiny bumps in the snow, which they go out and flatten by hand. But even with that painstaking work, there is always the danger that a ski edge will catch the world and start it spinning.

Is Hamilton still a record holder? "I'm the person with the fastest crash in the history of a non-motorized sport. I went down in '97 at 151 miles per hour. I crashed for six football fields, six football fields sliding. That first football field happens in two seconds."

Incredibly, Hamilton shattered the crash record, but he fractured only three minor bones.

Speed skiers don't break. They burn. And friction at 150 is fire on ice.

"It's burning everywhere," says Egger. "So you first go on your back and then you go on your hand and you're like a sausage. You're like a sausage on a barbeque."

"It feels like being in a frying pan and being hit with a baseball bat at the same time," says Hamilton. "[And you're thinking,] 'Get off the hot spots. It's so hot.'"

Later this year, Egger will try for the ultimate record. He's taken his missile shell and parachute out of the wind tunnel and he's testing them in the Alps. His record attempt will be half a world away on the highest mountain range on Earth, the Himalayas, because there's something about the air at 20,000 feet.

"The air is much thinner in this altitude. Our problem is the air pressure," says Egger. "It's a game with the air."

"Are we close to the edge here?" asks Pelley.

"I think if Harry can pull this off in the Himalayas, that will be as close as we can go to speed," says Hamilton, who thinks the top would be 165-170 miles per hour.

If Egger breaks the record, will Hamilton have another go?

"Definitely not," says Hamilton. "It's his realm now. I had a wonderful time with it, to do what Harry's doing, pushing the limit to that level. I think that's over for me. It's time for Harry to see how far he can take it."