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Push, jump on, drive down.
This is how tobogganing and bobsledding have functioned since the end of the 19th century.
Every ride is a test in search of that one km/h more top speed, the hundredths of a second that make the difference in competition.
It gets tricky with new ice channels that the teams don't know before.
Like the Olympic track in Yanqing.
That's why Germany's best bobsledders have already got to know the Chinese ice track without even having driven the track once in reality: in a bobsleigh simulator.
Francesco Friedrich, two-time Olympic champion and record world champion
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It's like that, we can test ride the new track here.
We can work out the curves.
This makes it easier for us to remember the sequence of turns.
And we already have a bit of experience when we are there.
And we're just not missing any runs and we can really, yeah, we don't have to memorize the corners anymore and we can just sit in and go down, sort of.
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Due to the Corona travel restrictions, many athletes were not able to try out the new 1.9 km long, futuristic track in advance - unlike usual, there was no test competition as part of the World Cup.
No country - with the exception of the Chinese team - was able to complete sufficient training runs before the Olympics.
Laura Nolte, European Champion
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The competition that doesn't have such a simulator may not even know the track in Beijing or only know it from videos and can't drive it as realistically as we can now in this case.
And so I think that can give us a big advantage.
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The German Bobsleigh Association has been working closely with the BMW Group for several years.
The pilots can test and optimize the sports equipment in an aerodynamic test center.
The simulator consists of an original bob mounted on a platform that can move in several degrees and is surrounded by a large screen.
In addition to the hardware, special software is also used.
Julian von Schleinitz, BMW Group
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We used very detailed track models.
That means that everything here is actually like the real thing, all the unevenness in the ice and, above all, everything that is on the outside of the track.
For example the posts, the lanterns, what the athletes need to find their way around during a ride.
We've got that all covered here.
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But as in the high-tech Formula 1, no matter how sophisticated the simulator with endless gigabytes of data, it cannot reproduce reality 100 percent.
Francesco Friedrich, the most successful bobsleigh pilot in history
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The track is tough, it has its pitfalls and you have to drive fairly accurately and precisely.
But as I said, we still have six training runs left.
We still have a few tasks that we have to solve, but we're in good spirits and we want to put in a really good race.
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The German teams dominated the World Cup.
Friedrich is the top favorite for gold in the men's two-man and four-man bobsleigh – and Mariama Jamanka is the defending champion in the women's two-man bobsleigh competition.