TORINO, Italy — A need for speed was rewarded with silver for bobsledder Shauna Rohbock at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 21. After getting bumped from the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Shauna of the Lakeridge 10th Ward, Orem Utah Lakeridge Stake, made good in her first try at the Games, winning a silver medal.
The Orem, Utah, native and former two-sport All-American for BYU, was pilot of the bobsled, and was joined on the medals stand by her brakeman, Valerie Fleming, Feb. 22. Their four-run combined time was 3 minutes, 50.69 seconds in a race in which less than three seconds separated the gold medal team from Germany from the bronze medalists from Italy.
"We're proud of her," were among the first words out of the mouth of her father, Charles Rohbock, during a Church News telephone interview shortly after she claimed her prize. Unable to travel to Italy, with no live TV coverage at his home in Orem, Utah, and without access to a computer where he could get Internet updates, Brother Rohbock was left without a way to find out how his daughter was doing in competition. So he got on the telephone with his son, Matt, who lives in Banks Ore., and was able to give live reports as they came over the Internet on his computer.
One of Charles and Myrna Rohbock's seven children — six of them girls, Shauna found her way to the bobsled course through soccer and track and field. It was in those sports that she was a BYU All-American. She still holds the school record for goals in a career (95) in the sport her father said is her first love.
As Salt Lake City was gearing up to host the 2002 Olympics, BYU's outstanding heptathletes of the late 1990s were recruited to be bobsledders, according to Shauna's father. He noted that BYU women's track and field coach Craig Poole said Shauna was the only one "crazy enough to go for it." Brother Rohbock said she went down the ice the first time and exulted, "Whoa!" and was hooked from then on.
"She's our need-for-speed girl," he said.
Speed contributed to her success in track and field, soccer and basketball at Mountain View High School in Orem. While at BYU, she combined speed, strength and endurance to finish eighth in the seven-event heptathlon at the NCAA championships in 1997.
With nowhere to go with her soccer talent after college, she turned to bobsledding and was on the verge of making it to the Salt Lake City Olympics. But after a time sliding as Jill Bakken's brakeman, Bakken decided to have a push-off to choose her Olympics partner. With Shauna recovering from an injury, the push-off was won by Vonetta Flowers and the pair went on to win the gold medal. Shauna was an alternate.
Between the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, Shauna spent two seasons playing in the short-lived Women's United Soccer Association professional league for the San Diego Spirit. She also continued bobsledding.
Part of Shauna's bobsledding strategy was to join the Army National Guard in 2000 as a member of the Army World Class Athlete Program which would underwrite her costs. She was under the impression that she would be exempt from call-up, but was surprised when she was scheduled, with the rest of her Utah unit, to be deployed to Iraq in 2004.
"There's not much ice in Iraq," she told the Deseret Morning News at the time. And not much chance to train for Olympics just two years away.
But when doctors examining the members of her unit detected she had a shoulder injury, her deployment was canceled.
Back on the ice, she warmed up for the Olympics by winning a silver and two bronze medals during the 2005 World Cup season, and three bronze and a silver during the 2006 World Cup season.
Shauna's oldest sister, Rachell Pay, was bubbling with excitement as she talked to the Church News on the telephone from her flower shop in Orem the day after the medal-winning race. "She's a really good example," she said of her sister. "She stands up for what she believes in." — Greg Hill