LOTS OF LOCAL PUSH.
TORONTO — If you’re watching the Canadian men’s bobsleigh team go through its difficult paces, and notice streaking swaths of maroon, you know it has to be a Monday.
“We have Mac Mondays where we wore Mac gear to training, and show our Marauder pride,” says Jesse Lumsden, the former Nelson, McMaster and Tiger-Cat football star who’s three months away from sliding in his third Olympics.
Of the 28 men and women who were announced this week as members of Canada’s World Cup bobsleigh and skeleton teams — which by February will be pared down to the Olympic team for Pyeongchang — four are from Hamilton or Burlington, with two of them former McMaster football stars, and a fifth, Cam Stones of Whitby, was a standout Marauder rugby player.
Joining Lumsden for the eightrace World Cup season, which begins in Lake Placid next week, are Burlington’s Joey Nemet who was the running back when McMaster won its only Vanier Cup in 2011, Hamilton’s Nick Poloniato who burst into prominence by piloting his sled to fifth place in last year’s two-man bobsleigh world championships, and Burlington’s Tim Randall, who was on the four-man team which was 13th at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
All but Poloniato are “push” athletes, providing the muscle to propel either the two-man or four-man vehicles, generally the most critical portion of a successful run.
Poloniato, who has been at the sport five years, will pilot Canada 3 this season, with veterans Chris Spring and Justin Cripps in the top two sleds. If Canada does well during the World Cups, it will qualify all three sleds for the Games. If not, just two will go.
“It’s probably going to be close who’s going to be 1-2-3 after the first three races,” says the graduate of St. Jean de Brebeuf, and Bishop’s University, where he starred as a defensive back.
“This is the big year for me and I’m very excited about it. Four years ago (during Sochi) I barely knew what bobsledding was. I’ve come a long way, I think.”
Randall, 31, played football at Burlington Assumption and the University of Guelph against both Lumsden and Nemet. He cannot explain why this area provides so many Olympic-calibre sledders.
“I think it’s more coincidence than anything but football is very big in this area, and a lot of guys come to bobsled from football,” he says.
Lumsden says that Hamilton-Burlington “is a good area for athletes and I think we’ve done a good job of getting into that market. We have a big country with a lot of athletes in certain pockets, and the more we can dive into those markets the better we’ll be.”
One of those dives, the annual identification camp at McMaster, was responsible for recruiting Nemet. He’d just finished his university career and, when he didn’t get an invitation to a pro camp, went to the sled camp. He missed last year with an Achilles heel injury and is an alternate on the World Cup team but could get into a couple of races soon.
“Everything was laser-focused on making it back to the team,” he says.
While Lumsden is regarded as the best running back in Mac history, Nemet — who played for Lumsden’s father Neil at Burlington’s Robert Bateman High School — is right behind him. Lumsden holds the school record for career rushing yards, with Nemet second, while Nemet rushed more often than any other Marauder has.
“He’s the greatest running back in Mac history, as far as I’m concerned,” Lumsden says of Nemet. “He’s got a Vanier Cup.”
Lumsden, now 35, is still one of the best brakemen in the world. He was fifth in both the two-man and four-man races at Vancouver 2010, his first Olympics. But in 2014 in Sochi, his sled (piloted by Kripps) flipped right over in the second run, costing them a chance at the podium. He says that’s big motivation for Pyeongchang.
“I love to compete and I feel like I’ve got a couple of bullets left in the chamber,” he said. “I remember Ron Lancaster once said to me, ‘Play as long as you physically can or until they drag you off the field.’
“The fact that I’ve been able to compete for this long, I feel pretty honoured.”