BEAR HOLLOW -- For a handful of the local media members Wednesday, an Olympics-type experience helped reshape perspective, thanks to speeds of 75 mph and 4-plus G-forces.
A sub-minute bobsled run down the full one-mile length of the Utah Winter Sports Park's icy track in all its jaw-rattling, vertebrae-shuffling and gut-wrenching glory may be a rush to a reporter, but it's competition for Olympians who compete in what has to be the fastest sport on blades.To help kick off its Wannabe Program, SLOC invited the media to pair up as passengers in four-man bobsleds.
Deseret News managing editor Rick Hall, chief photographer Tom Smart and I joined Chris Spier -- a former major-league infielder with the San Francisco Giants and the Montreal Expos and current coach with the Milwaukee Brewers -- for early runs down the refrigerated bobsled track.
Our driver for the two runs was Pat Brown, coach with the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, while brakeman duty fell to Bob Bills, SLOC's youth sport director and Wannabe Program coordinator.
Initial preparations included finding a helmet and signing a waiver. Then it was fitting a pair of us into the sled, which is sleek and glossy on the outside but bare-bones and stark on the inside, with an unpainted interior and simple footrests, handles and steering devices.
No plush seats, pads or straps or harnesses -- this isn't a state-of-the art roller-coaster ride, but a sled into which four massive athletes have to maneuver themselves in a short time after the push start.
Then Pat instructed us how to weave legs, arms and bodies into the sled for the best fit, how to hunker our helmets down over our shoulders (to avoid whipping our heads around during turns), how to look with peripheral vision and how to position our bodies so we weren't bouncing off others. Oh, and watch out for Curves 4, 6, 11, 12 and 14.
A push at the top from others and we were off. The run seemed gentle enough, as the sled started to pick up speed and Pat easily banked us through soft turns.
And then came the speed, the noise, the bouncing -- and Curve No. 4, where G-forces and centrifugal forces had the mind going one way and the body wanting to be forced another. The world then whizzed by in a blur of white (the track) and brown (the fences and surrounding hillside).
I lost count after Curve No. 6, knowing other intense turns were still to come -- and come they did.
At the end of our exhilarating 52.01-second run, we hopped out of the sled, catching our breath and adjusting to stable, flat ground. From a nearby bridge, Rick and I watched Tom and Chris' run, which to our satisfaction was nearly a half-second slower. Must have been the weight in our sled.
Watching bobsled races likely won't be the same now. I expect to be leaning into every turn and taking every chance to tell others about how I am a bobsled veteran.