In speed skating, the athletes have their own version of NASCAR's pit crews who can change blades quickly and make them razor sharp.
These technicians are a critical part of the team in a sport where victories are measured in fractions of a second.
In the sport of speed skating, one second can be the difference between a gold medal and last place.
Chris Needham is the man that's helping Team USA get an extra edge on the ice.
Skaters hit speeds of more than 30 miles per hour, gliding across the ice with ease.
"It's exhilarating and exciting , were going really fast on the ice and it is completely man powered, there is no additional equipment to make us go faster, other than our skates," said speed skater Thomas Hong.
"Every single one of our athletes is on a custom boot. They are made out of carbon fiber. They are extremely light," said Chris Needham, team USA's talent coordinator and skate technician.
"This is so so critical, so absolutely critical and something we spent the last four years working on."
It's Chris's job to make sure each athlete has the perfect skate. "When we talk about a skate there are really two parts to it and it doesn't matter if it's short or long track, there is a boot and a blade."
The blade is 1.1 millimeters thin. Making sure it's sharp on race day is critical.
"One thing that we always say is, you can have the most expensive, best fitting boots in the world, the highest quality everything, but if you don't have a good edge, it's all for not. It's essentially having a race car with bald tires," said Needham.
Unlike hockey skates, speed skates cut off at the ankle and are built more like a shoe than a boot to allow for more ankle compression.
In Chris's Olympic workshop, where he's busy sharpening and fine tuning, there are two types of skates.
A long track skate and the short track skate. Short track blades are fixed to the boot. Long track skates, or klap skates, attach firmly to the boot only at the front, but the heel detaches from the blade.
"That allows the skater to lengthen their stride to get more power into the ice thru the length of the stride."
While the skates are different, they do have similarities.
"The blade is actually off-set on the boot, so if you look, the blade doesn't run down the center of the boot, it's off to the side, similar to how NASCAR is set up, for the cars to only go in one direction."
speed skating has been an Olympic event since 1924 but short track didn't become an Olympic sport until 1988 in Calgary.
