JEREMY: So, the Winter Olympics are belng held In Italy
which, when you look at the place, seems to be a bit too... warm.
That's why we're in Norway.
A proper winter country.
And we've got some proper winter sports lined up for you.
So welcome, then, to the Top Gear Winter Olympics.
It's the Winter Olympics speeded up a bit.
Right. We'll begin with the biathlon.
Now, normally, this is a combination of skiing and shooting.
But since this is Top Gear, we'll be driving and shooting.
JAMES: Let's start by meeting the contestants.
I shall be using this.
The new Audi Q 7.
Audi's first attempt to make a school run 4x4.
You see, the Q 7 is based loosely on the Porsche Cayenne,
but with all the really hardcore, off-road stuff taken out.
So it's a bit like having your big snow boots
made by that Jimmy Choo's bloke.
It's a full three inches longer than a Land Rover Discovery
and it's a full 3% uglier than a troll.
But there are some good things about it.
It has a very, very good V6 3-litre diesel engine,
an excellent gear box and, most importantly, it has seven seats.
And the price for this, the 3-litre diesel SE?
Just under 40,000.
Very good.
The second sort of semi off-roader for families.
But what's the point of being second?
That's like driving around in Buzz Aldrin.
I'd much rather have Neil Armstrong.
So here he is. The car I'll be using as I bid for Olympic gold.
It's the Volvo XC90.
This was the first seven-seat 4x4
designed by someone who had children.
Not by an engineer who had read about them in a book.
It's a brilliant car. Really is.
It's not mumsy. It's not gittish.
It's like the family pet. It's like having a faithful, old Labrador.
There's more, too.
It's got a smooth, new diesel engine,
it's more spacious than the Audi and it's 4,000 pounds cheaper.
So, which is best?
The Labrador or Buzz Aldrin?
Well, that's what we're going to find out in our biathlon.
The rules are very simple.
You drive three kilometres around the course,
stop, shoot at five targets,
and there's a five second time penalty for every miss.
Yeah. Then we do another three kilometres on another course,
come back here, shoot at the targets again,
this time lying down in the back of the cars,
then it's a sprint to the finish.
The winner, that will be me, gets gold
and the loser gets to eat some golden snow.
Come on!
JEREMY: James grabbed an early lead in his more powerful Audi.
Whoa!
And in my enthusiasm to catch him up...
Trees!
Oh (BLEEP).
Oh, I love the Winter Olympics, me.
JEREMY: He would because Captain Slow was now well ahead.
I don't want to eat golden snow.
It's bumpy.
Biathletes, they need to eat 6,000 calories a day. 6,000!
That's the equivalent of two pounds of butter,
70 slices of bread, 112 eggs,
86 tubs of yogurt, 28 potatoes,
117 biscuits and 21 Twix bars.
On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete.
Thanks to my off, James had already arrived at the shooting ranges.
Magazine in.
Now, your real biathlete arrives here
with his heart doing about 180 beats per minute.
And he has to time this with his heartbeat and his breathing.
Shooting range.
Five out of five to beat, Volvo man.
I don't care about his score
because not only is he using the wrong car, he's using the wrong gun.
.22 is all right when you're nine,
but when you're in a hurry, you need one of these.
A Heckler & Koch MP5 machine pistol.
Okay. Fully automatic.
Eat lead, Olympic target!
Oh, yeah.
Staggeringly, I'd missed the lot.
So that was a five second penalty for each one.
Oh, 25 seconds is a week!
Nice and sideways there. Drop it down one.
Okay, I'm about a minute behind Captain Slow.
There's a lot of time to be made up. Power!
Yow! Airborne!
Diesel, of course, is excellent for off-roading.
As we're demonstrating now when I turn this one in really tight.
Give it a bit of boot.
Environmentalists say
that when the Gulf Stream stops, Britain will look like this.
Bring it on!
JAMES: With Clarkson nowhere in sight, I arrived back at the rifle range.
And this time, we had to fire lying down from inside the car,
which meant dropping the rear seats.
Right. Headrest out, down.
That's it.
In the Q 7, it was a doddle.
I press that. That's it.
Take cover.
Come on!
Oh, cock. I've missed a couple.
JEREMY: Oh, May! You're in the middle of the road!
(HORN HONKING)
(CHUCKLING)
Stop beeping your horn.
- JEREMY: Have you missed any? - Yeah.
Good, he's in the penalty bin. Right.
Seats down.
Now, the good thing is
I actually have one of these cars at home.
Well, how does that go down?
That's not it.
(GRUNTING)
I'm stuck.
How can I not know?
I'm gonna have to phone my wife.
Hi, darling...
No, I know. I pulled the handle.
Oh, the what?
Okay, thanks. Aha!
Go on.
It's flat enough.
Lower that. There we go.
Of course, the great thing about Jeremy's shooting is
that you are perfectly safe just as long as you stand right in front of the target.
JEREMY: Actually, I'd learnt my lesson and I wasn't gonna miss this time.
So with James thundering along, I was back in the penalty box.
Stevie Wonder could have done better.
A bit of air.
That's...
That's excellent.
But then James stopped thundering and started crashing.
God.
MAN: (ON RADIO) James is off! James is off!
James is off? Yes!
I mean, no. Oh, no.
Oh, poor James.
Never has a Volvo been driven like this before.
- That's him. - That's James.
Come on, I can catch him!
Sod off, Clarkson!
We are neck and neck as we're coming to the finish.
No! He's gonna get ahead!
He's on the outside. This is looking good.
Oh, that's a mistake.
JEREMY: Come on! Under steer!
Oh, he's coming through!
Come on! Come on! Yes!
Oh, no! No!
JAMES: Yes! Yes!
I've won a Top Gear event! Yes!
JEREMY: So that's one-nil to Captain Slow,
despite what we both thought was rather a poor car.
Not only is it ugly, but the air-suspension is too complicated
and the seat layout is all wrong.
Still, it didn't change the outcome.
- You are kidding? - It's your rules.
I wish I hadn't used the machine gun.
- Well, quite. - What were you drinking?
Anyway, you've probably noticed that TV's Richard Hammond isn't with us today
and that's because he's currently appearing on commercial daytime television.
Yes, he is. He's on live every afternoon filling Paul O'Grady's slot.
- Just realised what I said there. - I know.
Anyway, the thing is, before he started entertaining
the unemployed and the elderly,
we gave him a taste of what life would be like out here.
RICHARD: Yes. In Nuneaton actually.
This is the Motor Industry Research Association.
Here, cars are tested to destruction.
And in this chamber,
they can recreate the freezing temperatures at the North Pole.
It's the perfect place for a Top Gear experiment.
Namely, who breaks first in extreme cold?
Car or man?
The car we've chosen is a Citroen C1.
One of the most basic vehicles you can buy.
And the man it's going up against is also pretty basic.
Me.
Oh, good.
According to a top frostbite boffin,
the experience would not be pleasant.
Sort of minus 30.
You're gonna be in a lot of trouble if you're still in the car.
Ice crystals start to form in the tissues of your skin.
It will puncture the cells and they'll stay frozen.
Your fingers are gonna swell.
Anything else that's got frostbitten, particularly your manhood, might swell.
It will blister, it'll be very, very uncomfortable.
And eventually, probably drop off.
- Drop off? - Drop off.
ECG.
RICHARD: In order to protect me and my manhood,
I was covered in temperature sensors.
To be on the safe side, there needs to be an actual thermometer in me.
And this doesn't go in my mouth.
The car got slightly more dignified treatment.
And finally, with me wearing just a scarf and a woolly-pully,
we were both ready for the big freeze.
This is... Well, they were a bit worried my nose might drop off.
So they have to monitor the temperature with that.
It's all right, you'll get used to it. You won't even notice it.
The temperature was a mere minus three.
So, the evil boffins activated an 80-mile-an-hour Arctic wind.
The battle is heating up. Well, no. It's cooling down.
You know, it's...
Happily if I turn the ignition on, everything works.
So far, I'd say we're... We're even.
We're both just hanging on in there.
The C1 comes with a little socket and you can plug in your iPod.
And the office have very kindly provided me with one.
They've put some music on it. So I don't know what we've got.
(HOT, HOT, HOT PLAYING)
I'd been in the wind tunnel for over an hour now
and it was almost minus 23 in the car.
In the engine bay, it was closer to a much toastier minus 17 degrees.
So, surely, the engine would start.
Battery works.
(ENGINE STUTTERING)
Come on.
I'm giving you your best chance, come on!
But there was no pulse.
You are out!
So, I'd already beaten the engine.
The reason was I was running on blood.
But the car was running on diesel.
This is a little beaker of diesel.
And look, it's gone gloopy and solid because it's so cold.
But the contest wasn't over.
This was a battle to the finish and the C1's electrics were still going.
However, the boffins were now starting to get worried
about my falling skin temperature.
How's your nose getting on? All your tackle okay? Still intact?
Presumably.
It's minus 26 in here now.
Wonder if the car battery still works.
Give it a shot. Yeah.
Hang on. I can't...
The gearbox oil, it's all frozen up.
Try the iPod.
(SUMMER OF '69 PLAYING)
The evil boffins reactivated the Arctic wind
and the temperature plummeted to minus 40 degrees centigrade.
Amazingly, the electrics still worked. Just.
I was now in the frostbite zone and close to cracking.
My brain was so fuddled.
Is today light paper...
It had trouble tackling a simple eleven plus test.
What?
The boffins were gonna have to pull me out.
But would the car crack first?
Right. Here we go.
Oh.
It's...
had it.
Nobody can deny it hung on in there.
It never claimed to be a polar exploration vehicle.
It's a tiny, little, cheap super Mini.
It did incredibly well, but in the end,
I was better.
So, there you are. If you want to drive to the North Pole,
buy a Hammond.
Yes.
JEREMY: That was amazing, wasn't it? JAMES: Yeah, incredible.
JEREMY: Mind you, did you see how many clothes he was wearing?
Yeah. It must've been absolutely freezing in there.
Either that or he was a big girl's blouse.
Yeah.
Anyway, time for our next event.
JAMES: This is speed skating.
Which, in the proper Olympics,
involves a lot of men in condoms slithering about.
(HEART BEATING)
In a race, their hearts beat 200 times a minute
and it's all jolly exciting.
But we think we can do better.
This is our ice skate.
The brand new Jaguar XK8.
And this is Torvill.
What the older, fatter Torvill is going to be doing
is racing this fellow.
That is Eskil Ervik
and he's the world record holder for the 1500 metres
skating quickly thing.
Right. It's a 1500 metre race, three laps.
And they're off. Well, he is anyway.
That didn't go well.
Now, oh, that's...
That's extraordinary. There's no grip at all here.
No braking and no real steering.
(EXCLAIMING)
Bit of a slip from Torvill there.
Here comes May.
I think he's gaining on you.
JAMES: The skater was hitting 40 miles per hour through the bends.
Jeremy was barely touching four.
I don't think this is gonna make it as an Olympic sport.
You could slow down a ruddy funeral at this rate.
I'm going as fast...
This is so irritating, having a man keeping up with me.
He's just gone past me again!
He's just toying with me now. Look at him.
No.
I suspect it was my driving that let the Jag down there
because on the face of it, this does seem to be quite a car.
Obviously, on snowy roads like these, I can't possibly do a proper road test.
So we'll do that back in Britain in the spring.
But there are some things that I can tell you now.
For instance, it's faster and has two more seats
than the new baby Aston.
But it costs 15,000 pounds less.
Oh, sure, the Aston's a beautiful looking car,
but this isn't what you'd call a minger, is it?
It was designed by the same man who did the Aston.
And if you think it's beautiful on the outside,
wait till you see the interior.
Old Jags were all full of wood and pipe tobacco.
It was like being inside James May.
But this one,
it's like being inside James Kirk.
It really is a starship in here.
And it goes like one, too.
Really is very quick.
Or it would be if I had a bit more space to play with.
You could have so much fun on this road.
Followed by such an enormous accident.
So, because it was going dark, which it does every 15 seconds in Norway,
I went back to meet James at the hotel.
To make a plan for the next Top Gear Winter Olympic event.
(MAN CHATTERING ON TV)
You know that Jag? You know it wasn't very good at speed skating.
No.
Well, I was wondering, how would it be at like, off-road,
slalom,
speed-dance-skating?
Well, Jeremy, I've no idea because there's no such thing.
There is. I've just thought of it. What you need, okay...
No, honestly. Get a great, big, open area.
- A frozen lake, then. - Perfect.
And then carve a sort of course in it.
And then you drive round it.
Yeah, but what you want then is a four-wheel drive car.
- No, you don't. - Yes, you do.
Think about it. The lake doesn't freeze like that, does it?
It freezes level.
It's nothing to do with hills. You need four-wheel drive...
Four-wheel drive will give you control in slippery corners.
That's what it's for.
That's why rally cars are four-wheel drive. You need four-wheel drive.
- No, you won't. - You will.
You won't. And in the morning, after we've had a million more beers,
I'm gonna prove it to you.
- Fine. - You just wait.
We've got a long time to wait till morning in Norway...
JEREMY: Sometime the next afternoon, it was morning,
and we found the perfect frozen lake.
James also found his perfect car.
The four-wheel drive Land Rover Discovery.
Right. I'm going to build a track and this is what I've got in mind.
It's gonna start with a long, sweeping curve,
where Jeremy will get carried away and apply the power.
And then it will come down to a straight
where there will be a series of tightening S's, where Jeremy will crash,
if he hasn't already, then there's gonna be another sweeping curve.
And over the other side, there's gonna be another series of tightening S's.
And then finally, it will come back and join the big curve again.
Very good. But what James hadn't realised
was that the ice might not be thick enough
for his big Land Rover.
So, at this point it is...
- that thick. - Yes.
Do people fall through the ice in Norway on lakes?
Yes.
Often?
- Two last week. - Two last week?
- Yes. - And are they dead?
Quite dead.
And James would be competing in a car that weighs nearly three tonnes.
Whereas my Jag was sitting,
as you can see from its satellite navigation screen,
right in the middle of the lake.
No problem at all.
Because it's made from aluminium
and therefore weighs about three ounces.
Unaware of the problem, Bob the Builder was busy with a tractor,
carving out a course.
It's cutting down onto the five-foot thick ice.
And while he did that, I went for a sneaky practice
in my two-wheel drive Jag.
Oh, no!
I'm alarmingly out of control here.
Here's Mr May.
You know, in real ice skating,
- people sort of do this. - Yeah.
- And that. And this. - Yeah.
- Do you know what you're doing? - What?
You're going out onto an ice rink and going...
Like that.
JEREMY: Finally, our off-road, speed dance,
men's, women's, no hill,
two-wheel drive, challenge slalom
was ready.
- Good track that, James. - Not bad, is it?
- You ready? - Yeah, I'll have a go.
- How thick is the ice? - Oh, you'll be fine.
- Seriously? - Yeah.
And we're off.
Nice bit of drift there and flick it the other way.
This is the best way to get the power of the big V8 down onto the ice.
It's with four-wheel drive, intelligent differentials,
intelligent traction control.
Not just booting it and shouting.
You just don't need four-wheel drive out here.
You just don't need it.
Oh, yes.
Thought I heard the ice crack.
I'm reckoning on Jeremy not even being able to face the correct direction in this.
He'll just go round and round in little circles.
Oh, what a drift.
Very safe, very steady.
And it took him two minutes, three seconds.
- Pathetic. - Rubbish, man...
You were hardly moving.
Rubbish, I was going at a good, consistent speed and in control,
which is the point I'm trying to make.
- You were barely moving. - There were beautiful movements.
The other disappointment was that you didn't actually
fall through the ice, because do you know how thick it is?
Four feet?
About five inches.
- You're kidding? - I'm not. It's about five inches.
JEREMY: So, how would the rear-wheel-drive Jag get on?
Oh, yeah.
With all this space, it was so much easier and faster than it had been
either on the ice rink or on the road.
I'm sideways, in control. I look good.
Power. Oh, no!
That's a pirouette, that is, in ice dancing circles.
This is rubbish.
Work a bit harder here, don't be lazy. Come on.
Come on, get in. Get in. Nose in.
Give it some front-end grip now!
It's good!
It's bad!
All right!
Oh, yeah!
I want one of these cars.
No, wait, I want one of these lakes.
The final big, sweeping corner.
They're looking, I know, for something elegant, something pretty.
Whoa!
- James! - Very good.
I won!
- What do you mean, you won? - I won!
No, come on. I went round there in two minutes, three seconds.
You were actually 30 seconds behind when you crashed.
Look, ice dancing is not against the clock.
It's about poise and delicacy and beauty. And I was much more...
beautiful than you were.
Yes, but this is against the clock and it proves that four-wheel drive
has thrashed two-wheel drive. That's the end of it. That was my victory.
It's going dark, so we don't have any more time to argue, okay?
And the thing is
that before he became mired in a world of amusing shaped vegetables,
Richard Hammond came to Norway with James for a race.
Yes, and we thought we'd show it to you again.
- Now... - But just before...
Go and get your Discovery 'cause I need to pull this out.
- Can I show you something first? - What?
Since we were talking about Richard Hammond,
your car's had its teeth whitened.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
RICHARD: Lillehammer has one of the most formidable bobsleigh runs in the world.
The downhill course of twists and turns stretches for almost two kilometres.
Even so, a crack bobsleigh team can get down this run
in just under a minute,
with the bobsleigh itself hitting 80 miles an hour.
The speed comes at a price for the passengers, though,
because each member of the bobsleigh team
is subjected to cornering forces of 5G.
That's more than an F1 driver suffers.
Honestly, to do this you'd have to be brave, stupid
or just desperate to get on the television.
So this is where I'll be sitting, here in the middle.
And to make things even more arduous, we're gonna have a race.
We've come to Lillehammer because alongside the bobsleigh run,
we have this road.
They start in the same place, they run down the hill,
and they finish in the same place.
JAMES: The road is almost exactly the same length as the bob run.
And like the bob run, it's slippery, dangerous and full of difficult corners.
It requires a special vehicle.
So that's what we've got.
It's a Mitsubishi Evo world rally car,
with a 300 horsepower turbocharged engine, four-wheel drive
and studded tyres.
So that's the challenge. Can the rally car beat the bobsleigh?
I happen to think it can, although Hammond tells me it definitely can't.
RICHARD: This is my bobsleigh run.
It starts here and it wiggles all the way down here and it finishes there.
JAMES: And this is the road, which is in green,
and it starts here and it wiggles all the way up there.
But it finishes in exactly the same place.
Yes, but here's a point.
My bobsleigh can get from there all the way down to there
in less than a minute. You've had it.
But, you see, all you've got to take you from there to there is gravity.
- Yes. - That's nothing.
Well, I've got 300 horsepower and a huge turbocharger
and 420 spikes in each tyre
and gravity to get down there.
Yes, but my bobsleigh was custom built for going on ice.
Your car has had to be sort of adapted with clever tyres and stuff.
- You're wearing tights. - I am.
I can't take lectures on physics from a man in tights.
- I am aware of the tights. - Dancing, yes, but physics, no.
JAMES: The truth is, though, the bob is going to be hard to beat,
which kind of counts me out for driving the car.
So instead we've got Henning Solberg, the Norwegian National Rally champion.
MAN: One, two, three.
RICHARD: The bobsleigh's chance of victory all depends on how good our start is.
That means intense preparation for me
and the Norwegian Olympic Bobsleigh team.
One, two.
And while we practise running, the driver visualises the course in his head.
All of this provided much merriment for the bone-idle May.
- Are you warming up? - Yes.
I'm warming up as well.
To be honest, I couldn't see the funny side of it
because I was really worried about letting the team down.
Any time you lose here, a second is multiplied by three at the bottom.
So that'll be three seconds.
And I was also worried about whether my body would cope.
The key thing is, as you go into the corners,
to hold your breath, to get as much breath in as you can
'cause that actually holds your body up.
It supports you when you're being subjected to G forces in the corners.
Apparently, in a couple of places down there, it hits 6.5G.
The driver told me he's been doing this six years
and he's three centimetres shorter.
I can't afford to lose three centimetres.
James was strapped in and I was ready to run.
Our race rally driver could hardly speak any English,
but that didn't stop James giving him a patronising British pep talk.
Righto, Henning, it's the reputation of internal combustion
resting on your shoulders
in the next minute or so.
JAMES: I was going to time the car with my trusty stopwatch.
And Hammond's bob would be timed by the course officials.
This was it.
Mind the trees, you nutter!
RICHARD: We're starting to turn.
That's a turn! That's a turn. 16 corners...
Now that's three of them done.
JAMES: Two kilometres on ice in a minute.
Boy, has Henning got it all to do.
Ooh, that hurts a lot. That's my head.
(BLEEP)
RICHARD: The bob may have started slow, but it was just getting faster and faster.
And these guys never use the brakes.
No, no, no, no!
Now there's a complex coming up... Oh, that's one.
And there's another.
At midpoint, 1,000 metres in, it was anybody's guess.
JAMES: Right... The brakes, man!
(SHOUTING)
I'm banging my head!
(MUFFLED HEART BEATING)
Oh, my head! Big bumps!
JAMES: Henning was just awesome.
You can't go this fast on ice.
(BLEEP)
He hit the side! He's going to kill us!
I don't want to die in tights!
59:68.
Did we win? What did he do?
God.
I'm broken.
- What have you done it in? - 59:68.
Come on. Come on, come on.
- 1:02:24. - We won!
We did it!
The boys! Well, I hope I didn't slow you up too much.
- That was fantastic. - Yeah.
We did it. That really was something.
Awesome. Yes!
Right, that was last year, this is now, and I have some good news.
It's the weekend and Richard Hammond has therefore been able to escape
from his world of amusingly shaped potato crisps and he's here!
RICHARD: Up until now, Suzuki has been well-known for making small jeeps
and their reasonably priced cars.
Everything else they've made is about as interesting as that pine tree.
Well, no, maybe that one there. That one in the middle there.
But now, out of nowhere, they've come up with this,
the new Swift.
And I do mean out of nowhere.
Just look at it.
When this thing drives past,
you really are going to give it a second glance, aren't you?
It costs less than eight grand,
and yet for that, you get a perky 1.3 litre engine,
CD player, electric mirrors, tinted glass and some airbags.
It does just about the cleverest thing a small car can do.
Which is, not feel like a small car.
It feels big and solid.
And it feels grown up.
Which, considering what we're about to do with it, is a good thing.
You see, the last time we tested a small car,
we ended up playing football with 10 of them.
They were Toyota Aygos and, frankly, it all got a bit messy.
Thing is, it is a bit nippy for football
in these conditions.
But don't despair...
because we can do this.
I declare the Top Gear Winter Olympics
Suzuki Swift Car Ice Hockey "Cha"
open!
RICHARD: Yes, this is the pitch
and these are the players.
Ten Suzuki Swifts, making it five a side.
All piloted by local rally drivers.
James and I would be team captains and Jeremy the ref.
RICHARD: Look, it's not difficult.
Ice hockey is basically the most violent sport in the world.
- Bar none. So... - So if you bite James...
Oh, yeah. No, that... I mean, if it gets really...
If there is a death,
then you have to put somebody in the sin bin.
- And that's when I blow my horn? - Yes, if it all goes really nasty.
- If I have to stop the game, I blow this? - Yes.
- So it's... - Just you...
The end's come off.
RICHARD: With the stands packed to the rafters and the giant puck in place,
we were ready for the off.
Okay, the blue team, captained by Captain Slow!
That's Primetime television.
The red team, captained by Richard Phillip Schofield Hammond!
That's Daytime television! We're ready!
(BLOWING AIR HORN)
JAMES: Within a minute, Daytime TVscored.
Goal!
Is it a "goal" in ice hockey? Yeah.
Now, there were a lot of crashes when we did this
with the Aygos playing football.
I think by putting it on ice, we've made it a lot safer.
JAMES: Despite my best football cliches...
Oh, he's up like a salmon.
We're on a clear run for goal. It's the old one-two.
JAMES: Team Primetime were all over the place.
It's gone wide.
RICHARD: Meanwhile, Daytime TV were on fire.
And despite an obviously biased ref...
JEREMY: Come on, James! Come on, man, you've got it!
RICHARD: We banged home goal two.
Goal!
And goal three in quick succession.
Who's primetime now, then, boys?
(WHOOPING)
JAMES: Yes, my team were being trounced.
And when we finally did score,
guess who was otherwise engaged?
Yes, all in all, the ref's grasp of the game was poor.
- Why has that happened? - Well, that's...
And why haven't you scored?
- We have scored. - Well, I haven't seen it.
No, we just scored then. Who's the referee?
- I fell over a bit. - Did you?
- You missed the goal? - I missed the goal.
If it's not declared, it's not a goal.
Are you prepared to accept my word
as a primetime television presenter that we scored a superb goal?
- Yes, I am. - Good. Thank you, ref.
- But I didn't actually see it. - Oh, come on!
RICHARD: Daytime were still two goals ahead, though,
and the ref didn't like that.
What you...
It's in the middle.
RICHARD: James took immediate advantage.
Come on, boys!
Come on, three, three, three!
That's in. That's lovely.
Goal!
He's great, isn't he? Give him a megaphone, he's happy.
Come on, Bjorn and Bjorn.
RICHARD: But moments later, James crashed into his own man,
leaving his goalmouth wide open for me.
(HOWLING)
RICHARD: After that, the match really hotted up.
For most people, that is.
Oh, is that a beer?
(WHOOPING)
Oh, no. It's Hammond.
Bloody hell, James.
RICHARD: Still, another goal for Daytime, making the score...
That is now 5-2? 3? What?
What is it?
RICHARD: As the game entered its final stages,
the violence reached proper ice hockey levels.
Struck me own bloke, but never mind.
These are proving themselves to be tough little cars, these Swifts, I must say.
Upside down!
(HOWLING)
That could be where he banged himself.
MAN: Do you have any vacuum cleaner?
- A vacuum cleaner? - MAN: Yes, clean the seats.
Does Top Gear have a vacuum cleaner? No.
JAMES: Red 2 was out of action,
but my joy was short-lived.
There is a spare car.
We're writing number 2 on it as we speak.
He'll be back in business with 90 seconds of play left.
Whose side are you on, ref?
I am totally impartial. I've given you every possible opportunity.
You've just let me down.
Rubbish. I've scored two brilliant goals
whilst you've been chatting up some Norwegian woman
and standing in the bar.
- That was my wife. - It was his wife.
RICHARD: With play almost over,
I accidentally, but very accurately, took out James.
I'm out!
Hammond in the sin bin.
I can't believe I got sin-binned. For what?
Go on ITV, you go in the sin bin. It's that simple.
RICHARD: With me shackled, Primetime brought the score up to 5-4.
Oh, come on, ref!
Hammond, you may rejoin!
And that's the end of the game, everybody!
(LAUGHING)
(CARS HONKING)
RICHARD: No matter, Daytime have won,
which meant for James, there could only be one post-match drink.
- So how was the snow? - It was golden, thank you, Jeremy.
Yes! And that, gentlemen, is how you do that.
And with that, I must get back to the world of light entertainment.
- I wouldn't if I were you. - Why?
- 'Cause of what we're doing next. - Which is?
That.
- JAMES: Oh, you are joking? - I am staying.
JEREMY: This is the ski jump at Lillehammer.
The very one used in the 1994 Winter Olympics.
It offers jumpers 400 feet
of pure, unbridled terror.
Right, chaps. We have got to get that...
to jump further than him
in the Top Gear Winter Olympics
Ski Slash Car Jumping "Champio."
JEREMY: A 20-year-old, slightly rusty, Leyland Mini.
So, let's work this out. Mini does 0 to 60 in what?
About 14 seconds.
Hang on, that's not going to be very relevant, though, is it?
'Cause you're not going to get any grip off the tyres.
All you got up there is gravity.
Gravity is a cruel and unpredictable mistress, so...
Well, no, it isn't. It's a constant all over the world.
This is quite simple, arithmetically. We've got...
It's v=u+at. We know what acceleration due to gravity is,
9.8 metres per second squared.
But that's weight component down a plain 'cause it's on a slope.
We need to get the mass of the car, we need to know the angle of the slope,
then we need to work out the angle when it gets to the lip where it jumps off
and that will give us "v". Then it will follow a parabolic trajectory
we should be able to then calculate the exact point
when the car comes and meets the snow.
- It's quite easy. - I think we should go and get a cup of tea
and work that out.
- JEREMY: So come on, James. - Hang on, hang on.
Is gravity going to be enough
to get the car down the ramp and beat the skier?
- No. - Right.
- Then we have a huge problem.
We need some more propulsion 'cause we can't use the engine
because that will just spin the wheels. Right.
Also, we can't put a driver in it, 'cause obviously he'll be killed.
So we're going to have to work something out on steering.
- That can be your job, okay? - Okay.
There's another problem. Once it's set off, we've got to stop it at some point,
otherwise it will just soar over there and take out Lillehammer.
So I'll work out a way of stopping it.
- Right, guidance for you... - Stopping.
Braking for you and then I'll figure out some way of...
- Power. - Power.
Power, yes. I'll do the power.
Let's get about our business. I'll take my tea.
Earl Grey in Norway. Whoever would have thought it, huh?
JEREMY: Our first job was to mark the point where the skier had landed
so we knew the distance to beat.
Unfortunately, James was no Sir Edmund Hilary.
You got to spray paint it across.
There you go. I've done it.
No, you've got to get it across, the whole way.
- No, that'll do. - It won't do.
Shut up.
How hard can it be?
With James proving his own laws of gravity, I got on with the business of power.
Hi, is that the United Kingdom Rocketry Association?
Yeah. It's Jeremy Clarkson here from Top Gear
and I need some rockets.
Soon, though, it went dark again. So we went to the pub.
- Nice to meet you. - Damien.
The next morning, the rocketeers arrived
and announced that they could give the Mini
twice as much thrust, pound for pound,
than an F-15 jet fighter.
I've taken drag,
aerodynamic drag, ski friction, gravity
and the thrust of three contrail hybrid rocket motors into it.
- This is rocket science. - This is rocket science.
JEREMY: But then I saw the rockets.
I can buy these from post offices in November.
You just wait until you're up there.
- Are these really gonna give enough thrust? - They are.
More thrust than you can handle.
- And so where? We put them here? - No. Come on, Jeremy. That way round.
Down here somewhere. Take the boot out. Take the back out.
- Yeah. - Rip that off. Rip that off.
Let's have a boot full.
Meanwhile, I'd chosen a spot to build my snow barrier.
I think about here.
Or here.
No.
I think...
Right.
(EXCLAIMS)
How fast was the skier going when he left the thing?
MAN: 56 miles an hour.
We're going to be going 83 miles an hour.
This meant Hammond had to think big.
Richard Hammond, how's the braking going?
Yeah, it's going well. It's going well.
JEREMY: By this stage, Spider-Man had finally got to the top of the ski jump.
When the skier goes down, how does he... How does he...
How does he stay in the middle?
- Oh, it has tracks. - Grooves.
- Liquid nitrous oxide. - Yeah.
- And that's got all the oxygen in it. - Yeah.
Yeah. And in the bottom end, fuel, which is rubber.
Don't... Here's a tip.
Please, I'm a doctor of engineering, twice.
If you use rubber as fuel,
you're not going to go as far as if you use, like, petrol or dynamite.
Hey, Jeremy, do you think you could mount it on skis?
Why does he want skis?
Just trust me. If you put it on the skis, I can keep it dead straight.
- We'll have to make them. - Well, yes.
Obviously. We can't go to a ski rental shop and say,
"Have you got some skis for a Mini?"
James, the track is 1300 millimetres.
RICHARD: And with those measurements,
the icemen could now cut their special grooves.
Oh, yes.
If I lose it now, I'm going to end up in the Lillehammer ASDA.
I'd love a decent tea.
JEREMY: The rocket scientists have found a job for me to do.
- Does anyone want Earl Grey? - ALL: No!
With my skis fitted, the rockets installed,
and the ice grooves coming along nicely,
James and I dropped in on Hammond to inspect his snow bank.
I can guarantee that won't stop the Mini.
Partly because it's not substantial enough,
but mostly because you've built that in front of that slope,
and the Mini is coming down that one.
Right.
- Righto. - JEREMY: What a complete...
Some adjustments.
Did nobody tell you?
No, obviously! Or I'd have built it over there!
That is fairly embarrassing.
What I need is a big machine.
RICHARD: So I got myself a piste basher.
With this, I am going to construct something that will rival the Hoover Dam.
Those two muppets will not be laughing at me now.
And to speed things up, I even drafted in a herd of tractors.
JEREMY: While Phillip Schofield was building the great wall of Lillehammer...
Oh, yeah.
...the rocket car, primed with one and a half tonnes of explosive thrust,
began its long journey to the top of the jump.
And half an hour later, the ice grooves were ready for Chris Bonington's approval.
- I'm not... - Please don't come near me.
- I'm not touching you. I'm not... - Go over there.
- I'm nowhere near you. - That's really nice.
JAMES: This has never been done before.
No. We are in fact at the cutting edge of cocking about.
JEREMY: The time for cocking about, however, was over.
The wall was finished, the target was laid down,
sort of, and we were now in the hands of the rocket men.
They're filling the rockets with fuel.
We need to get that maximum emission down.
Straight away, yeah.
RICHARD: It's going to be an appalling mess.
An explosion. An explosion. A burning Mini...
- Carnage. ...coming down on its roof.
Venting. Red, white, blue.
- Confirm. - Confirm venting.
And in three, two, one, purge.
Come on, Mini!
Armed. Five, four, three, two,
one. Initiate.
(ALL CHEERING)
The wall's going to be needed!
(ALL LAUGHING)
- We were a bit short. - We didn't beat the ski jumper.
How well did it ski?
JEREMY: It's brilliant skiing!
I'm satisfied with that and anyway, that's it, I have to go.
I have to go back to the world of daytime telly.
- Boys, it's been a joy. Goodbye. - It's been great having you here.
- Thanks for coming. - That was quite something.
Bye.
Actually, we can go anyway 'cause it's the end of the show.
No, it isn't. There's one more thing.
This is a snowmobile.
It's a sort of Jet Ski with a tank track on the back,
and it's used for herding mooses
and generally larking about. But here's the thing.
No one in the whole of human history
has ever attempted to ride one of these things
down a ski jump.
Now the reason why no one has ever ridden a snowmobile
down a ski jump like that,
is the same reason we didn't put anyone in the Mini last night.
Yes, 'cause you'd probably be killed to death.
Yeah, very good chance of that.
Luckily, however, we know a man who has no fear.
You thought we'd forgotten him, but he's here. The Stig.
It's the landing I think I'm worried about most of all. His pods.
And on that bombshell,
or as he would now put it,
(IN SQUEAKY VOICE) "On that bombshell",
time to end the show.
Thanks very much for watching. Good night!