Bobsleigh hopefuls heading to… Waterloo?
With the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in full swing, winter sports enthusiasts from all over the world are getting a chance to take a closer look at some of the less common sports that only get air time during major competitions. Where the Eastern Townships is rife with opportunities to ski, skate, and curl, competitions like skeleton luge, ski jumping, or bobsleigh are not the sorts of thing that locals see every day.
It might surprise Townshippers to know, however, that thanks to the hard work of a former Olympian, Waterloo, Quebec is now the bobsleigh capital of Eastern Canada.
Although Waterloo is not far from several different ski centers, the small town is not exactly the picture of what comes to mind when one thinks about a competition that sees two and fourperson teams compete for the best times on a high-speed downhill track. The town is, however, home to the only Bobsleigh and Skeleton training track in Eastern Canada, and, according to 2002 Canadian bobsleigh team member Yannick Morin, one of only ten such tracks in the entire world.
“We noticed that we haven’t had very many people from Quebec or Eastern Canada since 2002,” said Morin, the President and founder of Bobsleigh Skeleton Quebec, explaining that the group first formed a training centre in Waterloo in 2010 and then later opened the push track in the Parc des Generations on Lewis Street in 2015.
“It’s only the part where we hop on,” the trainer said, pointing out that the timing of a bobsleigh team’s initial run makes all the difference in a sport where teams win by one hundredth of a second. Although ultimately it is important for the team to practice on a complete, multi-million dollar downhill track, the better part of training and qualifying to be a competitive bobsleigher is focused on practicing start times.
To that end, the Waterloo push track offers a 135 metre section of track built to the exact specifications of the start of a competition-level bobsleigh run.
“By the time you’re running full speed, you’ve covered about 50 metres,” Morin said, explaining that the track has an open-concept sleigh made to make it easier to observe the athletes positions throughout the push and hop-on and therefore to develop peak form. “It is really hard to be competitive without a good push,” he continued, adding that a hundredth of a second faster in the push will result in a greater acceleration over the course of the track. Often, he said, the teams with the top ten push off times in a competition will also be within the top ten finishers.
So what does it take to be a bobsleigher?
According to Morin, the prime candidate for competitive bobsleigh is big.
“The average male is over six feet tall and at least 220 pounds,” the Olympian said, explaining that the training centre tries to recruit football and rugby players because they have the kind of mass and strength necessary to get a good start. “People need to be fast,” he said, offering the example that CFL Wide Receiver Samuel Giguère is currently in South Korea as an alternate for the Canadian team.
Morin said that with the arrival of the Olympic Games, things at the centre have been very busy, but he added that public attention to the facility and what is being done in Waterloo has been steadily increasing over the last two years as well.
“Things are going very well,” the founder said, noting that there are now four people from Quebec on the national team. “We now know that it is making a difference.”
According to Morin the Quebec team trains on the Waterloo track two times per week throughout the summer and more frequently in the lead up to recruitment trials in the fall. When that isn’t happening, the team at Bobsleigh Skeleton Quebec is either working on trying to recruit more athletes, or working with local school or business groups on team-building exercises in a sort of “introduction to bobsleigh” activity.
“It’s very fun,” Morin said. “Now that people know we exist, we’re receiving more interest.”
More information about the waterloo training centre is available at http://bobsleighskeletonquebec.com