It is Day 10 and we have finally progressed to my favorite Olympic sport: Bobsleigh. Yesterday and today are the Men's 2-man followed by Women's 2-man (oxymoron alert!), with Men's 4-man toward the end of the week.
American Bobsledder and Salt Lake City native Steven Holcomb does not look like a world-class athlete. In fact, at 1.78 m (5'10"), 100 kg (220 lb), he is kind of bowling ball-shaped. Looks are deceiving. In 2-Man, Steven and his brakeman Steve Langton manage to propel a 170 kg (384 lb) 2-Man sled from 0 to 50 km/hr (30 mph) in just under 5 seconds! Now he stands ready to break a 62 year drought since the last US 2-man bobsled to win an Olympic medal. But Holcomb's path to this point was not straightforward.
It is hard to picture, but Holcomb began his athletic career as a competitive ski racer. But the selection of Salt Lake City as the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics provided additional opportunities. Holcomb saw someone with a bobsled in the back of his truck and decided to attend a bobsled tryout. He took an eight part test of strength and sprinting speed and scored 675 points - exactly the minimum number to make the Men's national B team. But he was told that since he was only 18, they were going to take the next lowest athlete because he was older. Holcomb eventually made it back onto the team when another athlete was injured and was selected to be a pusher on US pilot, and now national team coach, Brian Shimer's 4-man team for the Salt Lake City Olympics. He hurt his hamstring and was not able to compete, but Holcomb wanted to take part in the Olympics in some way and was selected as one of the forerunners who drive sleds down the track prior to the official start of competition. He obviously "caught the bobsledding bug" because by the 2004-5 season, he was consistently ranked in the top two or three bobsled pilots in the US. He qualified for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy; finishing 6th in 4-man and 14th in 2-man.
This first Olympic success resulted in Holcomb joining the World Cup circuit for the 2006-7 season. His 2-man team won the World Cup championship while his 4-man team was second. But as his bobsled career was taking off, his eyesight began to fail. Holcomb had been diagnosed with degenerative eye disease called keratoconus in 2002. This is a thinning of the cornea that causes distorted vision. For a long time, he was able to get by with contact lenses and glasses. As his vision degraded, he became more and more dependent on driving by feel. Finally, he reached the point where he often could not recognize the person sitting across from him at a table. Imaging going down a bobsled run at 130 km (80 mpg) when you can't even see the front of the sled clearly! He was afraid that he would kill someone besides himself if he kept going this way. He became depressed and attempted to kill himself with a drug overdose. That didn't work, but did bring him to the point of confessing to his coaches that he was going blind. They convinced him to find a specialist who could help him.
Normally, the only cure is corneal implant surgery and that is what the first twelve specialists Holcomb saw recommended. But that would mean missing an entire Olympic Cycle. Enter specialist #13, Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler, who convinced him that there was another option: injecting B vitamin riboflavin into Steven's cornea followed by treatment with a specific wavelength of light. The idea was that when exposed to the light, the riboflavin would cross-link with the cornea, increasing its thickness and stabilizing his condition. This radical new treatment was a success, but it still left Holcomb with 20/1000 eyesight. Three months later, he had special contact lenses implanted and in 20 minutes, Holcomb's eyesight went from 20/1000 to 20/20. I remember what an amazing experience it was going from 20/200 to 20/20 when I put on my first pair of glasses, so I can imaging how he felt.
In the short-term, his new-found eyesight actually created more problems with his driving - before he was going completely by feel, but now he had all of these visual distractions to deal with. He had some successes, however. He won the first 4-man World championship for the US since 1959 in 2009 and followed it up with a Gold medal in Vancouver. This second victory broke a 62 year drought since the US last won a Gold medal in 4-man bobsled in 1948. But despite these successes, finding the right balance between sight and feel was a work in progress. Finally, success in Sochi was looking good when Holcomb's 2-man and 4-man teams both won the 2012 World Championship. But first, he was going to need a new ride.
Since 1994, all US bobsleds had been produced by the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project funded by NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine. These sleds reached their peak with the "Night Train" 4-man sled that Holcomb used to win the Gold in Vancouver. But the momentum had gone out of this project so US Bobsled approached sponsor BMW/USA with the idea of designing the next generation of US bobsleds. This was a little complicated because BMW headquarters in Munich was designing new sleds for the German team. But a deal was signed and designer Michael Scully went to work. His idea was to replace a lot of the steel in the old sleds with high strength, light weight carbon fiber. The rules state that a 2-man bobsled must weigh 170 kg (384 lb) empty. The use of lighter materials meant that the designers would have to add weight back, but they could choose where to put it. After 68 "failures", Scully found design #69 where the weight was moved from the front to the center of the sled to make it more maneuverable and that would help it maintain momentum in the high-speed portions of the trace. Now, the trick was to build and refine this prototype in less than 18 months - a ridiculously short time to design and perfect a design.
USA Bobsled received the first prototype in 2012 and then received six brand-new 2-man sleds (three for the men, three for the women) in time for the US Olympic trials in October 2013. Then it was onto the World Cup where Holcomb promptly won four of the seven World Cup races and claimed the 2-Man World championship. Things were really looking good for Sochi!
However, breaking the 62-year drought since the US last won an Olympic 2-man title was not going to be easy. Perhaps no other sport has such a strong "home court" advantage. Getting down the track in one piece is one thing. Getting down the fastest is another thing entirely. It is estimated that Russian driver Alexander Zubkov has been down the track at the Sanki Sliding Center perhaps 300-400 times. Holcomb has been down it perhaps 40 times. Zubkov showed what he had learned in the first run; setting a track record of 56.25. Steven was comfortably in second with a time of 56.34. Zubkov again had the fastest run in run two with a 56.57, but Steven Holcomb had on the 8th fastest time of 56.84. This put him in 3rd place, but more importantly, he injured his calf during the push. The injury was bad enough that US team coach Shimer asked Holcomb if he wanted to withdraw from the 2-man to save himself for the 4-man. Holcomb told him that it took 4 years of work since Vancouver to get to this point and he was not going to let a "boo boo" stop him.
There is a reason why the US has not won a medal in 2-man since 1952. While the US has many world-class push athletes, it rarely produces world-class drivers. The three push athletes in a 4-man sled can sometimes propel an inferior driver to a medal. But when there is only one push athlete, the driver not only has to be able to push the sled, he also has to be able to feel the track and quickly find the fastest line. Now Steven's ability to push the sled was reduced. Could he compensate?
The 3rd run begins with the fastest sleds first. 39 year old Zubkov showed that he has learned how to drive the Sanki track by getting only the 8th fastest start, but gradually got faster and faster and ended up with the fastest run; in fact, it was another track record of 56.08. Switzerland's Beat Hefti, who had moved passed Steven in the second run, unleashed the fastest start of the round and finished in 56.26; faster than either of Holcomb's first two runs. Then it was Holcomb's turn. With brakeman Steve Langton doing most of the work, Holcomb's start was only 12th best. At the first checkpoint, he had the 9th fastest time. He was 7th fastest at the second checkpoint and 6th fastest at the third checkpoint. He continued to find speed on the lower half of the course; posting the fifth fastest time at the fourth checkpoint and ended up with the third best time at the finish; 56.41. The highest-ranked Canada-3 sled had a somewhat disappointing 3rd run so Holcomb's margin after three runs was 0.09 seconds. But Canada-3, Latvia-1 and Russia-2 were all within 0.14 seconds.
Only the top 20 teams compete in the 4th run and they go in reverse order, so Holcomb had a long wait. Russia-2 pilot Alexander Kasjanov, taking advantage of his experience on the Sanki track and the huge cheers from the Russian fans, had a run much like Zubkov's in the previous run. He had the 13th fastest start but ended up with the second fastest run in the 4th run; 56.57 for a 4 run total of 3:46.30. Going next, Latvia-1, despite the fastest start time, could only manage a 56.75 and moved into second place. Justin Kripps, driving Canada-3 made a serious mistake before one of the three uphill sections and ended up with only a 56.94. This dropped him behind both Russia-2 and Latvia-1. Now it was Holcomb's turn. 18 years of hard work had brought him to this point. Could he kill another 62 year drought and earn his second Olympic medal? Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was Langton's extra efforts to push the sled, but their start was 4.88 seconds, 0.04 seconds faster than the previous run. Now it was all up to Holcomb. He was driving well, but the Russia-1 time was very good so his original 0.14 margin was down to 0.05 seconds at the next to last checkpoint. I was holding my breathe, but at the end, Holcomb held on to the Bronze medal by 0.03 seconds - and Holcomb had ended a second 62-year drought for Team USA!
I hope that you don't mind the extra long story, but I wanted to make the point that Olympic athletes don't just appear at the Games. Each of them has decades of hard work behind them, and maybe more than a few challenges overcome, to get to this point. I hope that you've enjoyed the long version of Steven Holcomb's journey.
Loved it.
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