In French, snowboarding’s halfpipe is called the “demi-lune.”

In Canada — and almost every other country that participates in winter sports — bobsled is known as bobsleigh.

It sounds so … Currier & Ives. Horse-drawn sleighs, jingling bells, cozy warm blankets …

Which is probably not what Romy Logsch was thinking as she was thrown from the back of the Germany 2 sled at 90 miles per hour last night when driver Cathleen Martini couldn’t recover coming out of curve 13. Well, except for the jingling bells, which were probably more like jangling and clanging bells in her helmeted head. Fortunately, Logsch managed to stand after sliding down the track on her back and to wave to the crowd.

More of a wiggle than a turn, curve 13 on the Whistler Sliding Centre was dubbed 50/50 by U.S. bobsledder Steve Holcomb track because a sled has a 50/50 chance of making it through cleanly.

And yes, it’s Centre, not Center.

Since the 2010 Olympics began, the talk at the Sliding Centre has mostly focused on track speed and how to handle the 11-12-13 curve combination. I walked up the 0.9-mile-long track yesterday afternoon and can see why this section poses such problems.

First, the track drops 500 feet from start to finish — about the same height as a 50-story building. Most bobsled tracks, I was told, drop the equivalent of 40 stories.

The top of the 16-curve track swoops down through the fir trees like you would expect a bobsled track to — with big banked turns. But at curve 11, it drops precipitously down the ravine separating Whistler from Blackcomb. Constrained by topography, the track seems to run straight down the fall line here, with wiggles rather than big turns — like a satin ribbon hangs.

Holcomb feels as if he’s shot out of a cannon on curve 11. “As soon as you pick up that speed, you hit 12, and it catches a lot of people off guard [and they can’t recover],” Holcomb said after the two-man bobsled competition. “That’s why it’s causing so many problems.”

Bree Schaaf, the driver of USA-3, which finished fifth yesterday, understands why people want to build such fast tracks.

“Everyone always wants to break records,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what gets you media attention. That’s what gets everyone excited.

“But you also have to get sleds down the track or you don’t have a race.”

Her brakewoman, Emily Azevedo, added that tracks can be faster, “as long as there aren’t curves that are so technical at the bottom end of the track.”

The track at St. Moritz, Switzerland, is very fast, she pointed out. “But the curves at the bottom are not as close together and tricky as [curves] 11-12-13 [here].”

At the World Cup bobsled race in January, speeds of the two-women bobsleds were about 57 mph. At the Whistler track during Olympic competition, they have been around 90 mph.

“If they want to make [the 2014 Olympic track in Sochi] faster, at the bottom of the track where the speed is coming, separating the curves a little bit and making them bigger [would make it safer],” Azevedo added.

Which might make the sport look more like the genteel sounding bobsleigh.

Or the demi lunie…