Editing Cresta Run (section)

==The sport and its history==
{{Essay-like|section|date=November 2024}}
The Cresta Run and the SMTC were founded by devotees of sledding (tobogganing in English) who adopted a head-first [[Prone position|(prone)]] technique of racing down an icy run, as opposed to the feet-first [[Supine position|(supine)]] and somewhat faster [[luge]] race. Both evolving sports were natural extensions of the invention of steerable sleds during the early 1870s by British guests of the Kulm hotel in St. Moritz. The initial crude sleds were developed almost accidentally&mdash;as bored well-to-do gentlemen naturally took to intramural competition in the streets and byways of mountainous downtown St. Moritz posing a risk to each other and pedestrians alike. This gave impetus to steering the sleds, and soon runners and a primitive mechanism evolved to allow some steerage along the longer curving streets of the 1870s. It also allowed higher speeds on the longer runs. Local views varied, but eventually complaints grew louder and Kulm hotel owner [[Caspar Badrutt]] built the first natural ice run for his guests, as part of his efforts to popularize wintering in the mountain resort, while careful not to lose customers to boredom, nor his workforce to injury from errant sleds on the streets.

The committee members were Major William Henry Bulpett (founder of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club), George Robertson, Charles Digby Jones (Robertson and Digby Jones planned the proposed course), C. Metcalfe, and J. Biddulph.