50 Fun Facts About Bobsleigh

What were the first racing bobsleighs of the 1880s mostly built from?

Wood. By one account the very first was simply two wooden sleighs joined by a plank, rigged up in 1888 by an American visitor, Wilson Smith, to ride down from St. Moritz to Celerina.

By tradition, the 'bob' in bobsleigh recalls early crews doing what?

Rocking back and forth. Riders bobbed like this in the belief that it added speed, and the sport says that is where the name comes from, though dictionaries trace 'bobsled' to an older short logging sled.

A St. Moritz hotelier's 1864 money-back bet is said to have launched winter tourism in the Alps with guests from which country?

England. As the story goes, the hotelier dared a few summer guests to return in winter and promised to cover their costs if they were disappointed; they came, and stayed for months.

Why were the early sledders in St. Moritz eventually banned from the public roads?

Too many collisions with pedestrians. Pushed off the streets, the sledders got purpose-built ice runs just outside the village instead, beginning with the Cresta Run in the mid-1880s.

Eddie Eagan won bobsleigh gold in 1932, twelve years after winning Olympic gold in which summer sport?

Boxing. Beaten in his first bout at the 1924 Games, he came back eight years later on a sled and won, the only person with gold in different sports at both the Summer and Winter Games.

Bobsleigh champion Billy Fiske, among the first Americans killed in the Second World War, was flying for which force?

Royal Air Force. He joined up in 1939 and was fatally wounded in combat in August 1940, well over a year before his own country entered the war; at 16 he had driven a sled to Olympic gold.

The St. Moritz-Celerina track, the world's oldest, is unique among bobsleigh tracks in what way?

It is naturally refrigerated. With no cooling pipes, the whole run has to be rebuilt by hand from snow and water every winter, so its line is never exactly the same two years running.

Four-man bobsleigh was part of the first Winter Olympics, held in 1924 in which resort?

Chamonix. Nobody there knew it was an Olympics: the meeting was billed as an International Winter Sports Week, and the IOC only named it the first Winter Games afterwards.

Why did the 1960 Winter Olympics become the only Games without bobsleigh?

Building a track cost too much. A poll suggested only nine countries would send sleds, so the organisers at Squaw Valley in California decided a run was not worth the expense.

Which future head of state raced bobsleighs at five straight Winter Olympics from 1988 to 2002?

Albert II of Monaco. He was already a member of the IOC when he made his Olympic debut, and Olympic sport ran in the family: his mother Grace Kelly's father and brother both rowed for the United States.

Which bobsleigh event joined the Olympic programme in 1932, eight years after the four-man?

Two-man. Crew sizes had only just been tidied up: at the two Games before it the big sleds could carry either four or five riders, and the 1928 winners rode five to a sled.

Two-woman bobsleigh made its Olympic debut at which Games?

Women's bobsleigh had begun with two demonstration races at Lake Placid in 1983.

Which bobsleigh event was added in 2022 to give women as many Olympic events as men?

Monobob. Every pilot in this solo event drives an identical sled, so the result turns on how she pushes and steers and not on how much her team could spend on equipment.

Which two nations have been the most successful in bobsleigh across all major competitions?

Germany and Switzerland. It was not always so: American crews and their sled designs led the sport in the first half of the 20th century, before the two European neighbours took over.

Almost every modern bobsleigh track is built from what, with a skin of ice on top?

Concrete. The big bends are banked very steeply, and a crew sweeping through them is pressed into the sled at several times normal gravity.

In bobsleigh track design, what is a labyrinth?

Every modern track must have at least one straight and one labyrinth, and ideally at least fifteen curves.

Why do bobsleigh crews fix slabs of metal inside their sleds?

For weight. A heavier sled runs faster, so crews add ballast up to the permitted maximum; before a limit arrived in 1952, teams chased speed by picking very heavy men instead.

In a four-man bobsleigh, which crew member jumps in last at the start?

Brakeman. He shoves from the back, leaps in last, and then leaves the brake alone all the way down: his only job on board is to stop the sled once the finish line is behind it.

How does a bobsleigh pilot steer the sled?

By pulling on two rings. Ropes run from the rings to the front axle, and only the gentlest tugs are used, because at racing speed a sharp pull would put the sled into the wall.

What do bobsledders wear to grip the ice as they run up to 50 metres with the sled at the start?

Shoes with brush-like spikes. The grip matters because that short push is the only moment a crew can add any speed of its own; once everyone is aboard, gravity does the rest.

How is an Olympic bobsleigh race decided?

Total time of four runs. The clock splits crews to a hundredth of a second, and even then an Olympic gold has twice been shared by sleds that could not be separated.

Which James Bond film climaxes with 007 chasing Blofeld down a bobsleigh run?

On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The 1969 chase used top winter-sports athletes as stunt doubles, and a real crash they suffered during shooting was kept in the finished film.

What riding position made its debut at the Cresta Run's 1887 Grand National, breaking with custom?

Head-first. The new style took over so completely that the sport which grew up on that run is still ridden face down, chin just above the ice.

Which of the three sliding sports is the slowest?

Skeleton. Its rider is less streamlined than a luger, so on the same ice the sled tops out at around 130 km/h, while luges pass 140 and four-man bobsleighs approach 160.

Which NFL running back pushed a bobsleigh for the United States at the 1992 Winter Olympics?

Herschel Walker. The Heisman Trophy winner was first picked for the four-man crew but ended up in the smaller sled, finishing seventh with pilot Brian Shimer.

At Innsbruck 1964, Italy's Eugenio Monti famously lent what to Britain's Nash and Dixon?

A bolt from his own sled. The Britons used it to win the gold he had been chasing himself, and Monti was honoured with an international award for fair play.

The rebuilt bobsleigh track named after Eugenio Monti lies in which Italian resort?

Cortina d'Ampezzo. The old run on the site, a venue of the 1956 Winter Olympics, had been shut since 2008, so an entirely new track was built there for the 2026 Games.

Which American hurdler went on to race as a bobsleigh brakewoman at the 2014 Winter Olympics?

Lolo Jones. It made her one of the few people to compete at both Summer and Winter Games, and she stayed in the sled long enough to win a world two-woman title in 2021.

Four-time Olympic bobsleigh champion Kevin Kuske competed in what before he took up the sport?

Sprinting. A relay bronze medallist at the 1998 World Junior Championships, he switched to the ice, where he was rated the fastest man in the sport at the push and turned that start speed into four Olympic golds.

Francesco Friedrich tied for a 2018 Olympic bobsleigh gold with a pair from which country?

Canada. Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz matched Friedrich's sled to the hundredth of a second, so both crews were given gold and no silver medal was awarded.

Which country became the first from Asia to win an Olympic bobsleigh medal, a four-man silver on its home track?

South Korea. Pilot Won Yun-jong's crew finished level with another sled to the hundredth of a second at Pyeongchang in 2018, so two silver medals were handed out and no bronze.

Kaillie Humphries won Olympic bobsleigh gold for which two countries?

Canada and the United States. After two golds in Canadian colours she fell out with its federation, switched teams in 2019, and won again for her new country in 2022, weeks after becoming a citizen.

Before bobsleigh, Kaillie Humphries competed in which sport until she was 16?

Alpine skiing. Her first Olympics, in 2006, were spent as an alternate who never raced; she then moved to the driver's seat and won Olympic gold four years later.

Which American bobsleigh pilot collected five Olympic medals without a gold before finally winning one at 41 in 2026?

Elana Meyers Taylor. Three silvers and two bronzes across four Games had left her with more medals than any other woman in the sport and no title, until the missing colour finally arrived.

Steven Holcomb piloted the US to four-man gold in 2010 after surgery for a disease destroying which of his senses?

Sight. An eye disease had left him almost blind and deeply depressed until an experimental operation restored his vision; two years later he ended America's 62-year wait for the title.

Why was Aleksandr Zubkov, winner of both men's bobsleigh golds at the 2014 Winter Olympics, later stripped of them?

A doping violation. He had carried the host nation's flag at the opening ceremony in Sochi, but investigators found that his samples had been swapped as part of a state-run scheme.

The Jamaican bobsleigh team made its Olympic debut at which Games?

1988 Calgary. They crashed on their third run and never officially finished, yet the crowd took to the tropical underdogs so warmly that Hollywood turned the story into a film five years later.

Fans of which cryptocurrency raised the money to send Jamaica's bobsledders to the 2014 Winter Olympics?

Dogecoin. The sled had qualified for Sochi but its crew could not afford the trip, and within two days the joke currency's community had covered most of the shortfall.

In Cool Runnings, which actor plays the disgraced former bobsledder who coaches the Jamaican team?

John Candy. His character, the disgraced cheat Irv Blitzer, is pure invention: the real team was coached by Howard Siler, an American who had raced at two Winter Olympics himself.

The theme song of Cool Runnings was a cover of I Can See Clearly Now by which artist?

Jimmy Cliff. The reggae veteran had long been missing from the American pop charts, and his cover of Johnny Nash's 1972 hit carried him back onto them and into the top 20.

How did Jamaica's real bobsleigh crew leave the track after their crash?

Walking beside the sled. The crash in Cool Runnings is the real one, cut in from television footage of the race, but the sled carried on their shoulders was invented for the screen.

In Cool Runnings, Derice Bannock recruits his friend Sanka Coffie, who is a champion in what?

Pushcart derby. The joke has a real root: the Americans who founded Jamaica's team are said to have had the idea while watching one of the island's downhill cart races.

Which country sent Africa's first Olympic bobsleigh team, a women's crew, to the 2018 Winter Games?

Nigeria. Driver Seun Adigun had founded the team only two years earlier, and the three women raised the money themselves, with no backing from their country's sports authorities.

The project that built America's gold-medal bobsleigh of 2010 was founded by a star driver from which motorsport?

NASCAR. Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine was watching the 1992 Games when he learned the Americans were racing in sleds bought from Europe, and set out to build them home-made ones like the 'Night Train'.

Cool Runnings makes them Olympic rejects, but where were most of Jamaica's first real bobsledders recruited from?

The armed forces. The call for volunteers went out in the Jamaica Defence Force's weekly orders, and three serving soldiers, Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris and Michael White, became the first members of the team.

Jamaica's bobsledders shared the underdog limelight at their first Winter Olympics with which cult hero, last in both his events?

Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards. Neither the British ski jumper nor the Jamaican sled came near a medal at those Games, yet both stories were later retold as feature films.

Which American village staged the Olympic bobsleigh races of both 1932 and 1980?

Lake Placid. In 1932 a thaw delayed the four-man race so long that it had to be run after the closing ceremony.

Which resort's track, built for the 2010 Winter Olympics, has seen luges and bobsleighs top 150 km/h?

Whistler. Its speeds ran so far beyond what the designers intended that a leading sliding official called for future tracks to be held to about 135 km/h.

Which studio turned the story of Jamaica's first Olympic bobsledders into the 1993 comedy Cool Runnings?

Disney. The film is only loosely based on fact: the Games and the crash are real, but its four sledders and their coach are invented characters who share no names with the real team.

Which Baltic country was upgraded to 2014 Olympic four-man bobsleigh gold after the winning Russian sled was disqualified?

Latvia. Pilot Oskars Melbardis and his crew had crossed the line second in Sochi and had to wait until 2019 for the result to be rewritten and their gold medals to arrive.