Everything You Need to Know About Bobsledding: History, Rules & Olympic Trivia

Bobsledding is just wild. It’s one of the world’s fastest sports, and it’s also incredibly dangerous to twist and turn on an iced-up with banks and bends.Competitive bobsledders slide down an icy run in a two-person or four-person sled and are sent screaming toward the finish line at high speeds. Most athletes worry about injuries that could potentially end their season or even their career. But if there’s a mistake in bobsledding and there is an accident….let’s not think about that. Regardless, the adrenaline rush that bobsledding presents makes for some compelling spectatorship.

You’d be forgiven if what little you know about bobsledding comes from the 1993 Disney film Cool Runnings. Us too! It’s not exactly the most mainstream of sports, so we came up with 13 facts about bobsledding to answer questions and provide better insight into one of the most exciting sports at the Winter Olympic Games.

1. When was bobsledding invented?

Although sledding is an old activity, bobsledding is considered a pretty modern sport that was first developed in the 1880s in the Swiss Alps. There was this Swiss guy named Caspar Badrutt who owned the Palace Hotel in St. Mortiz and was looking for ways to make his winters as busy as the summers. Caspar convinced some rich guests to hang out all winter, keeping them well-fed and drunk and sufficiently entertained. This was successful enough that Caspar basically ended up inventing winter resorting, but as the concept grew more popular and his hotel got busier in the winter, the guest started looking for things to do. Caspar’s guests started fucking around with putting a pair of skeleton sleds together with a steering board to make a new sled that could make prolonged runs. They kept crashing into townsfolk so Caspar — who was more than happy to make his guests happy and keep them from leaving — built a natural ice run called the Cresta Run in 1884. The first bobsledding competition took place at Cresta Run in 1898, and it is still being used today more than 130 years later.

 

2. How did bobsledding get its name?

They bob their sled on the ice before they slide down the run. The winter sport got its name due to the bobsledders using a back-and-forth rocking technique — basically bobbing — to improve the sled’s speed before they take off.

3. Short history of bobsledding before the Olympics

The very first bobsled club was form in 1897 in St. Moritz, Switzerland and by 1904, bobsledding competitions were taking place at the St. Moritz-Celerina Olympic Bobrun track not very far from the Cresta Run. In 1923, the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT) — which is also called the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) — was formed in time for bobsledding to make its Olympic debut the following year.

4. When did bobsledding become an Olympic Sport?

Bobsledding made its Olympic debut at the 1924 Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix, France with the 4-person event. Switzerland naturally took home the gold medal that year, with their team of Alfred Neveu, Eduard Scherrer, Alfred Schläppi, and HeinrichSchläppi. England took home the silver medal. Rules, however, were a bit more flexible back then and allowed a 5th sledder on the team. Belgium won the bronze medal with a 5-person team.

The 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York saw the debut of the 2-person bobsledding event in addition to the 4-person event. Hubert Stevens and Curtis Stevens of the United States won the first gold medals for the 2-person bobsledding event. The United States also won the gold medal for the 4-person.

 

5. Women in bobsledding

There have been women bobsledders for as long as there has been bobsledding. However, women only began competing in international events in the 1990s, and the first women’s bobsled team didn’t debut until the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. The two-person United States team of Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers won the very first women’s gold medal at the Winter Games. Making the event even more significant was that Vonetta Flowers became the first Black athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. The women will have the first monobob event debut at the 2022 Winter Olympic games in Beijing. Men don’t have one!

6. What is a bob run?

A bobsled track is known as a bob run. The length of the tracks used in Winter Olympic competition are not consistent. At the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway at the Lillehammer Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track, the track is 5,610 feet. The track at Sliding Center Sanki used for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, for example, is 4,478 feet. The Olympic Sliding Centre track used for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea is 6,620 feet (or 2018 meters, in honor of the Olympics).

A typical bob run has 15 to 20 turns per track, the bob run’s large turns are steeply banked and built up as high as 20 feet (or 6 meters). They all have varying degrees of slopes and vertical drops and turns. The majority of bob runs have a permanent foundation made from concrete or stone that’s covered with several inches of ice.The sidewalls of the straightaways have reinforced ice around 18 inches high (or 46 centimeters). The icy banks may have a lip of ice overhanging above the track. This overhanging ice prevents fast-traveling bobsleds from flying off the course.

7. The Jamaica Bobsled Team: Is Cool Runnings true?

Mostly, yes! The 1993 film Cool Runnings isabout a team of rag-tag Jamaicanathletes attempting to qualify for and compete at the bobsledding event and represent Jamaica at 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Alberta, Canada bobsled event — which is indeed based on the actual Jamaica bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games that was indeed coached by a former Olympic bobsledder named Howard Siler. Some details are obviously embellished, but the Jamaica bobsled team did crash and they were not medal contenders.Original Jamaican bobsled team member Devon Harris even wrote a book about the experiences at the 1988, 1992, and 1998 Winter Games. According to Devon Harris, the film’s storyline is not quite accurate as some things happened slightly differently at the Olympics.

The legacy of Cool Runnings can still be felt: Jamaica’s first female bobsledding team made their debut at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea with a two-person team of Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian and Carrie Russell. That event was movie-worthy itself, as the coach quit just before the games — and took the goddam sled with her. The team was scrambling for a replacement until a sponsored stepped in and rescued them at the last minute.

Click on the picture to buy Cool Runnings!

8. Is bobsledding dangerous?

Yes! It’s very dangerous. Unfortunately, there are well over a dozen examples of fatal bobsled runs, starting with the early Cresta Run days in 1907. Since then, multiple Olympic gold medalists have been killed, many at six different FIBT World Championships from 1939 to 1981. That’s without getting into all the trauma brain injuries that competitive bobsledders are subjected to. The repeated head-shaking as your helmet grinds against the surface of the ice and bangs against your own sled can cause tears in the brain, and the series of mild brain trauma in the brains of bobsledders are not unlike the head trauma suffered by boxers and football players. Medal winners Pavle Jovanovic and Eugenio Monti are just two examples of bobsledders who have sadly committed suicide. So think about that before you take up bobsledding!

9. What kind of sleds do bobsledders use?

In the beginning, bobsleds were made mostly of wood material. A few years later, steel runners were attached to the wooden sleds and by the mid-1900s, steel and aluminum were used with fiberglass to construct the whole bobsled.There are two types of bobsleds, the 2-person and the 4-person — with the former being a maximum of 8.9 feet long and the latter being a max of 12.5 feet. The sled’s four runners are typically attached in pairs on two axles. A pilot steers by turning the front axle with ropes or a wheel that is linked to the axle by cables. The brakeperson apply the brakes —which is located between the rear runners — via a toothed bar that presses against the ice.

10. What are some bobsled rules?

One big change in bobsledding occurred in 1952, with the added rules of a limit to the combined weight of the bobsled team and their sled. Bobsledding crews used to believe that the heavier they were, the faster they could go. With the rule implemented in 1952, the weight can’t be more than 860 pounds (or 390 kilograms) for the 2-person bobsled, and 1,389 pounds (or 630 kilograms) for the 4-person bobsled. The maximum weight for the women’s competition is slightly different, with weight for the two-women event being 770 pounds (or 350 kilograms).

11. Is bobsledding expensive?

It’s very expensive to play bobsledding! Of all the sports in the world you could pick up, bobsledding is probably one of the most expensive sports to participate in — mostly due to the bobsled itself. You can’t really just walk into your local retail chain sporting goods store and buy a brand-new bobsled. An actual bobsled for competition can cost upwards of $100,000. The price of the sleds does not include the runners, or blades. If you want to buy runners for your bobsled — those are what the blades on the sled are called, like the metal blades on a pair of ice skates — then be prepared to pay more than $10,000 for them.

In fact, bobsledding was not part of the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California because the of how much it would cost to create the structure of the ice track.

12. How fast can bobsledders go?

The maximum velocity of a bobsled can reach speeds of at least 80 miles per hour (or 128 kilometers per hour) The fastest reported speed attained by a bobsled is 124.9 miles per hour, (or 201 kilometers per hour). A lot of thought is put into how bobsledders can time their pushes and maximize their acceleration at the beginning during the 164 feet (50 meters) they have to push the sled because it’s the only point in the race where the sledders can influence their speed — after that, it’s up to gravity.

13. What kind of equipment do bobsledders have?

One of the most important pieces of equipment bobsledders must wear are the spiked shoes. These allow competitors to get traction on the ice when they begin the race. The spikes on the shoes are arranged in a brush pattern, and they can’t be any longer than .03 inches, (or 1 millimeter), and no wider than .15 inches (or 4 millimeters). In addition, the spikes cannot be farther apart than .11 inches (or 3 millimeters). Bobsledding competitors also wear skintight, aerodynamic sled suits to improve the drag on the way down the bob run. A protective helmet is obviously mandatory and typically comes with a full-face visor or a pair of goggles.

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Looking for more Winter Olympic Sports content? Check out our lists of facts about snowboarding, curling, speed skating, and biathlon!

Image Credit: Picture by Sandro Halank via Wikimedia

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