Athlete Bios
Bobsleigh
USA's Holcomb eyes podium with new vision
Last Updated: Friday, February 5, 2010 | 3:00 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Steven Holcomb will drive USA 1 as a member of the American bobsleigh team at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)The foggy images that once distorted Steven Holcomb’s eyesight are gone. And Holcomb now realizes that clear vision is actually helpful in steering a bobsled, a sport that relies heavily on hand-eye co-ordination, as well as on strength, instinct and feel.
Holcomb, 29, the pilot for USA 1 or Team Night Train, as the crew members like to refer themselves, raced for several years with keratoconus, a degenerative eye disorder that changes the shape of the cornea, distorting vision.
Holcomb’s condition was first diagnosed in 2001, and he continued to race even as his vision diminished. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, he placed sixth in the four-man event and 14th in the two-man competition. In 2007, he won the two-man World Cup title.
In March 2008, Holcomb had experimental surgery in which corrective lenses were implanted behind his irises.
The results since have been impressive, and Holcomb is expected to be a medal contender at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Holcomb won the 2009 world championship in the four-man bobsled, the first time the United States had done so in 50 years, since Arthur Taylor’s triumph at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 1959.
“I drove by instinct,” Holcomb told The Associated Press. “I didn’t have to think about what I was doing out there. It’s basically another day at the office, except that we won a world championship.”
He will look to continue that run at Whistler while trying to become the first American since 1948 to lead a team to the gold medal in the four-man event.
Holcomb was born and raised in Park City, Utah. He served in the National Guard from 1999 to 2006. Before taking up the bobsled, he was an Alpine skier.
