History of Bobsledding

The bobsled was developed in Switzerland late in the 19th century when someone put runners on a toboggan to get greater speed down the famous Cresta Run at St. Moritz. The sport of racing bobsleds down the mountain quickly became popular among British and American visitors.

The new sled got its name because early racers thought they could get even more speed by bobbing their bodies backward and forward. They soon realized it didn't work, but the name stuck. The first organized competition in the new sport was held on the Cresta Run on January 5, 1898, with five-passenger sleds. (Two of the passengers had to be women.) For better steering, they were equipped with four runners, positioned on axles much like the four wheels of a car. With the new design, speeds on the mountainside became dangerously fast, so an artificial bobsled run with a gentler slope was built at St. Moritz in 1902. Bobsledding spread rapidly to other Alpine countries. By 1914, when the first European championships took place at St. Moritz, there were more than a hundred bobsled runs in Europe. After a hiatus because of World War I, the Federation Internationale de Bobsleigh et Tobagganning (FIBT) was founded in 1923 to standardize rules so that the sport could be included in the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix, France, in 1924. Only four-man sleds raced there. A five-man competition replaced the four-man in 1928, but the four-man returned in 1932 and has been on the program ever since.

Bobsledding in America

North America's first artificial bobsled run was built in 1911 at Montebello, Quebec. The first in the United States was built at Mount Van Hoevenberg, near Lake Placid, New York, for the 1932 Winter Olympics, when the two-man bobsled competition was added to the program. World championships for both two-man and four-man bobsleds have been held since 1931. The two-man bobsled was developed in the United States. It was originally made simply by connecting two small sleds with a pivot, which allows the front sled to turn, bringing the second sled with it--much like a tractor-trailer combination.

Until the 1950s, U. S. bobsledders were the best in the world, in part because of technological innovations. Bob and Bill Linney in the late 1930s built a two-man sled with a steel plank as the linkage. The plank's flexibility allowed much greater speed through turns. The Linney brothers also built the first sled with side-mounted handles, which allow team members to push a sled to a flying start and then leap aboard just as it reaches the starting line. Bill Linney, in 1946, developed the first all-steel sled with shock absorbers to increase speed. The U. S. won at least one gold medal in bobsledding at each Olympics until 1952, when they won silver medals in both events. Since then, European countries have dominated international competition. A major reason is that governments and corporations have been willing to invest money in further technological improvements, while money has been difficult to come by in the U.S., where the sport's popularity is very limited. Canada has joined the top rank in international bobsledding since an $11 million, state-of-the-art was built at Calgary for the 1988 Winter Olympics. Pierre Lueders of Canada in 1995 became the first driver ever to win all three overall Gold Cup titles, the two-man, four-man, and combined. He and Jack Pyc won the silver medal at the world championships that year. Lueders and Dave MacEachern also won the two-man silver medal in 1996.

Conduct of Competition

In the Olympics and other major competions, the bobsled run is at least 1,500 meters (about 1,640 yards) long and it has about 15 or 20 turns. The average slope ranges between 8 and 15 percent. A run is prepared for competition by laying wet snow over a concrete or stone foundation and then soaking the snow with water. Ice sidewalls, about 18 inches high, keep the sleds from flying off the run on straightaways. Larger turns have banks as high as 20 feet, often with an overhang of ice to help contain the sleds. The combined weights of sled and team are limited to 375 kilograms (about 827 pounds) for the two-man and 630 kilograms (about 1,388 pounds) for the four-man sled. A race is made up of four runs and results are based on cumulative times. Crews push the sled to a running start from behind the starting line, but electronic timing doesn't begin until it actually crosses the line. In the four-man competition, two crew members have basically finished their work once they've leaped into the sled after the push, although they can help a bit during the run by leaning in one direction or the other to help keep the sled from skidding. Once across the starting line, a race is basically a test of the driver's ability to get the greatest possible speed out of the sled. That involves negotiating turns, including some hairpin turns of more than 180 degrees, at speeds of nearly 100 miles an hour. The brakeman, who is the rearmost passenger, brings the sled to a stop at the end of the run by engaging the brake, a toothed bar between the rear runners that bites into the ice surface.