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Driver Amanda Stepenko of Canada competes in her first run of the 2-man bobsled competition during the FIBT Skeleton World Cup in November at the Olympic Sports Complex in Lake Placid, New York. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images) A refined new sledding toy was the talk of the town in St. Moritz, Switzerland, at the end of the 19th century. These early sleighs were made of two wooden toboggans bolted together upon which sliders rode headfirst. A rudimentary steering device was attached at the front.
Partying aristocrats contested most of the early competitions that began in 1897 down the icy roads of St. Moritz. Five years later, the sport began to take shape with the construction of the first bob track in the Swiss resort town.
The term bobsleigh comes from the way early crews bobbed their heads in an attempt to increase speed on straight ice courses. The name stuck, even though sliders soon abandoned the head-bobbing because it didn't increase speed. As the sport grew in popularity an international governing body, the International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation (FIBT), was formed to standardize rules and organize competitions. Canada was one of the seven founding FIBT nations.
Four-man bobsleighs debuted in 1924 at the inaugural Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France. Not surprisingly, the Swiss won gold.
The four-man event was briefly abandoned in 1928. Five and six-person crews with at least one woman became the new racing format. This requirement was dropped two years later to return to four-man crews. The rule change put an end to most women's participation in the sport for more than half a century.
The FIBT started four-man world championships in 1930 and added a two-man event to the Olympic program at the 1932 Lake Placid Games.
Technology changes the game
The most dramatic bobsleigh breakthroughs began in the 1950s. Wooden toboggans gave way to streamlined steel and fiberglass designs.
Along with the technological advances, Alpine nations recognized the importance of building up athletes for fast starts. The need for sled speed introduced soccer players, sprinters and gymnasts to the sport. A rule limiting the total weight of the crew and sled, instituted in the early 1950s, removed the advantage held by heavier teams. Lighter crews were now allowed to attach weight bars to their sleds to level the playing field.
As bobsleigh's popularity grew, artificial ice tracks sprouted up in winter resorts throughout the 1960s to feed the craving for speed. The sport's athlete and fan base remained healthy in infrastructure-rich Europe, but its growth was stunted elsewhere due to high participatory costs and the limited availability of quality runs and equipment.
There are, however, some signs that other nations are catching up. Non-traditional winter sport countries such as Morocco, Australia and Mexico have begun dabbling in bobsleigh. The interest from summer-sport nations can be attributed to the groundbreaking Jamaican bobsleigh team at the 1988 Calgary Games, whose story was made into the Disney movie Cool Runnings. With renewed emphasis on fast, powerful starters, nations strong in sprinting are following the Jamaicans' lead.
Golden Olympians
Germany and Switzerland are the world bobsleigh superpowers. The Swiss have captured 30 Olympic medals, while the East, West and unified German teams have combined for 37. The Americans had success in the early days, collecting four of six two-man medals at the 1932 and 1936 Games. William Fiske claimed gold in the 1928 and 1932 four-man events.
Germany's Andreas Ostler emerged as the next double-gold winner, taking both events at the 1952 Oslo Games. Ostler and brakeman Lorenz Nieberl won all their runs despite using a 16-year-old sled.
Eugenio Monti of Italy was the feel-good story of the 1968 Games in Grenoble. The nine-time world champion had won two Olympic silver and two bronze medals in his 12-year bobsleigh career. He missed out on a chance to win medals at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games because the California resort had no bob run. It remains the only time the sport was not part of the Olympic program. The 40-year-old Italian slider finally reached the top of the Olympic podium in Grenoble, winning both gold medals in 1968.
Former javelin thrower Meinhard Nehmer of East Germany is a four-time Olympic medallist. Nehmer swept the two and four-man races at the 1976 Games in Innsbruck and then took the four-man gold and two-man bronze four years later in Lake Placid.
Wolfgang Hoppe maintained East German dominance through the 1980s. He won both bobsleigh gold medals at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo and returned to win two silvers at Calgary 1988. After taking four-man bronze in Albertville, Hoppe became one of a handful of Olympians to win medals in four consecutive Games by claiming the four-man bronze.
Gustav Weder and brakeman Donat Acklin of Switzerland carved out their place in Olympic history by winning gold in 1992 and later became the first duo to repeat as two-man champions in 1994. The pair joined Swiss four-man crews to earn bronze and silver at the 1992 and 1994 Games, respectively.
Canada's bobsleigh legend Pierre Lueders proclaimed that the driver to beat in both the two and four-man bobsleigh events at the 2006 Torino Games would be Germany's Andre Lange.
Lange did just that, sweeping both events. The Germans, led by driver Sandra Kiriasis, also won the women's two-man race. Lueders, along with brakeman teammate Lascelles Brown, did not leave empty handed, however, taking home silver in the two-man event.
