After the first two of four runs, USA-1, using the Bo-Dyn Night Train bobsled, is in first place.  Let’s hope it continues!

YAHOO!

VICTORY!  The Night Train is the Olympic champion!  NBC showed Geoff Bodine in the audience.  The last gold for the USA in fouur man bobsled was in 1948!  There is a fabulous story about Steve Holcomb and his eyesight beign restored by surgery.  I’m excited!

One spectator at the Whistler Sliding Centre was particularly proud to see bobsleds bearing “USA” decals whizzing past into three of the top seven spots, and that’s because he helped buy and build the sleds.

Bobsled was always something of a tease.  There would be a chance of a medal at first but by the last run, the USA was hopelessly behind.  In the last few Olympics that began to change.  Great dedicated athletes are a large part of that.  But so is the free market.

Geoff Bodine is a NASCAR driver, winner of the Daytona 5oo in 1986, and in 1992 he discovered the USA bobsled teams had a serious problem:  They were being sold the old, substandard sleds from the European teams.  There was no way to win with the cast-off sleds of their competitors.  USA could not afford new or even used bobsleds.  He had to do something:

“When I heard that our athletes weren’t using American-made bobsleds, that was unacceptable,” Bodine said.

Bodine did more than talk; he put up his own money and collected other donations to start Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project (BOdine and Chassis DYNamics):

Bodine — assisted mightily by lead designer Bob Cuneo — has spent 18 years keeping up with bobsled technology changes, research and development costs, and whatever else that’s been needed to keep American pilots on par with the rest of the world.
 
The gap to make up was huge at first. It’s closed now, proven last year when Holcomb and Bo-Dyn’s “Night Train” won the world four-man championship — the biggest checkered flag grabbed by American bobsledders in half a century.

And Bodine is not done:

“What I get out of tonight is, the girls won a medal, that’s fantastic, but it just shows the future of the U.S. women’s bobsled team is fantastic,” Bodine said after the women’s race. “I’m more excited about that than the medal, I think. The future looks so good, and we’re not going to back off in sled development. We’re going to get better and watch out in four years.”

No government money; no subsidies, no sports ministers or bureaucrats.  Just the usual things that happens in America:  A dream, lots of effort and determination, and high goals.  As a follower of Christ, I like how Bodine puts it at the end:

“God puts things in front of us for a reason,” Bodine said. “Things happen for a reason. We don’t always see them. We don’t always see it. But I was put in the right place at the right time and it all worked out.”

This is a nice Sports Illustrated story by David Epstein on Bodine.  Perhaps a note of thanks to Bo-Dyn would be in order.  They do take donations, too.  Their web site is:  http://www.bodynbobsled.com/