When I covered Luge World Championships last year in Lake Placid, I mentioned to a friend how quiet the sport is. At such high speeds, I expected the sleds to sound like jets. Instead, they fly down the track in a whisper.

“Wait until you hear bobsled,” my friend said.

Bobsleds — particularly four-man bobsleds — sound like a bullet train hurtling by. But it wasn’t this sound that surprised me (because this was, after all, what I expected luge to sound like). It was the sounds at the start.

When bobsled is shown on TV during the Olympics (is there a bobsledding channel yet??), we hear the yelling at the start. But the sounds are so much more than this ritualistic yelling and cheering as the pilots and pushers sprint off the start.

Each team comes to the start about two minutes before they are scheduled to push off. While coaches and team officials haul the sleds into place, the two or four men — each bigger than 200 pounds — strip out of their warm-ups and begin acting like angry bears.

They grunt, growl, snort, slap each other and themselves, slap the side of the sled, and growl some more. Then there are the Braveheart-like battle cries.

I recorded the Romanian sled before their third heat in the four-man competition at the 2010 Olympics. If I can figure out how to upload it, the 1:24 audio file is here. (If there is no link, then I was unsuccessful.)

I was startled at first, then began giggling (much to the disgust of the large German man standing next to me). I hadn’t heard the women bobsledders make such a fuss — though a spectator I talked to insisted that they do. If I tried bobsled, would I yell like a charging animal?

No, I would scream like a girl. But not until I was hurtling down the track.