The New York Times reports:
WHISTLER, British Columbia — General Motors provides the official cars, trucks and S.U.V.’s that keep the Vancouver Winter Olympics going. But when it comes to snow events, the true official vehicle is the PistenBully 400.
Grooming trails for skiing is a mixture of dark art and molecular-level science, particularly at the Olympics. And Tim Tice, a groomer at the biathlon venue here, says that his work has advanced enormously since the days when he first set trails by dragging chain link fencing behind a snowmobile. Not only is the machinery more sophisticated mechanically, over at the neighboring cross country skiing venue, it’s even laser guided.
Most of the groomers used at the various Olympic sites are various PistenBullies (the name loosely translates as “trail basher”), which are made by Kassbohrer All Terrain Vehicles, a German company that dominates the arcane snow grooming machine industry along with Prinoth of Italy...
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