San Diego, California News Station - KFMB Channel 8 - cbs8.comJeff Zevely Joins Olympic Luge Team To Test Out Wind Tunnel

Jeff Zevely Joins Olympic Luge Team To Test Out Wind Tunnel

It may be summer, but some Olympic athletes are already gearing up for winter. The U.S. Olympic luge team is conducting tests at a wind tunnel at San Diego Air & Space Technology. It's all an effort to cheat the wind and take the gold in the 2010 winter games.

What the U.S. luge team would do for one-tenth of a second. In Salt Lake City, the Germans edged two-time medalist Mark Grimmette out for the gold by the blink of an eye.

"Some of the stuff is top secret that we are testing," Mark said.

From helmets to sleds and suits, the same tunnel that tested six decades of military technology now has an aerospace engineer at its helm looking to up the limits of luging.

"This is what we do, so we think we are pretty good at it," Dave...

After more than 30 years of Olympic heartbreak for team USA, the Americans finally medaled in the luge in 1998.

"We were two-hundreths of a second behind the German team for the gold medal," Gordy Sheer said.

Sheer scored silver in '98, and is still searching for the next big breakthrough.

"We found one fabric that seems to be very fast," he said.

They wouldn't tell us what that fabric was, but would say clutter kills a good time.