The Fastest Sport On Earth

Scott Pelley Catches Up With Two Of The World's Best Speed Skiers

(CBS)  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."