Winter 2018 Olympics: Bobsledding

The Winter Olympics are getting closer and people are beginning to pay more attention to the sports that will be featured in them.  Most of these winter sports are only highly publicized every four years during the Olympics.  An example of this is the sport of bobsledding.  Bobsledding is a sport that most people have heard of and know the general concept of what it is without knowing many details about the athletes or logistics and scoring of the sport.  The sport gets minimal media attention, even throughout the Olympics because it is overshadowed by figure skating and snowboarding.

There has only been one movie made about bobsledding, “Cool Runnings”.  It is about the first Jamaican bobsled team and how they were formed, practiced, and eventually made it to the Olympics.  The movie shows the basics equipment, requirements, and skills needed to compete in the sport.  It also states the basic rules and possible qualifying times to make it into the Olympics around 1993.  It is more of a fun team building and friendship movie than an informative bobsled movie but it did help to expose more people to the sport.

In all bobsleigh events there is one driver and at least one other person in the sled to help with the momentum of the sled as it travels through the course.  The driver has to turn the corners and lean the sled at the perfect angle for the sled to not lose momentum during the race, and the other members in the sled have to lean along with it to make the sled steady.  The driver of the team has to memorize each course and the angles of every turn to be prepared before he/she even gets to the event.

There are three different bobsleigh events: four man, two man, and two women.  The four men race can be man and/or women.  The four man bobsleigh event has been a part of the Winter Olympics since the first one took place in 1924.  The two man bobsleigh was added in 1932 at the third Winter Olympics, and the two women bobsleigh was added in 2002 at the nineteenth Winter Olympic Games.

For the 2018 Games the center that the race takes place is also the venue of the luge and skeleton races.  All three sports use the same track with the course length being adjusted per sport.  All of the bobsleigh events use a course length of 1,376.38m, or 0.86 miles.  The average slope of the track is 9.48%.

Bobsledding is only one of the many sports that are only in the spotlight during the Winter Olympics.  Even during the Olympics they are still overlooked and out shined by other sports like snowboarding.  But throughout the years the viewership has risen thanks to the movie “Cool Runnings”, and with time it will hopefully become more popular.