‘FIGHTER PILOTS ON ICE’
Canada’s largest-ever Olympic bobsled and skeleton team headed to Pyeongchang
CALGARY — Bobsled pilot Justin Kripps has seen the world flash by at ice level and in the cockpit of a Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18.
And it was a bit of deja vu all over again.
“They took me for a ride in one of these jets a couple years ago up in Cold Lake and it is actually pretty similar, surprisingly,” said Kripps, one of 24 athletes named Wednesday to Canada’s largest ever Olympic bobsled and skeleton team. “Doing knife turns and pulling G forces in the jet is pretty similar to the sled. Although these guys go Mach 1, and we only go about 150 (km/h), our reference points are right next to us so it feels like you’re going really fast.”
The team announcement was made in an airplane hangar near the Calgary International airport, with RCAF personnel and the specially painted CF-18 Demo Hornet on hand. The bobsled and skeleton team and the RCAF have a longstanding working relationship and clearly support one another’s patriotic endeavours.
An RCAF member called the bobsled and skeleton athletes “fighter pilots on ice” and wished them well in their “mission for medals” at the Olympics.
Canada’s ice pilots have already claimed a ton of hardware on the World Cup circuit, with 16 bobsled medals and seven in skeleton. Kripps won both the two-man and overall bobsled driving titles, while Kaillie Humphries topped the women’s overall charts. Elisabeth Vathje led the six-member skeleton side, finishing third overall after claiming four podiums, and is a definite medal threat in Pyeongchang.
Other skeleton medal-winners were Dave Greszczyszyn (bronze at Winterberg, Germany), Jane Channell (silver at Whistler) and Mirela Rahneva (bronze at Innsbruck). Barrett Martineau and Kevin Boyer round out the men’s team.
Together, the two sports are poised to win perhaps as many as four medals in South Korea, including one from each bobsled discipline, and will do Canada proud from coast to coast to coast as they like to say. With athletes hailing from B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, the team sees itself as Canada’s team. They’ll get arguments from just about everybody of course, including the hockey teams. But the sentiment is generally a valid one.
“It is a representation of the whole country, but more than that it’s a lot of people who believe in each other and push each other to be better,” Kripps said. “It’s a really good team environment that we have this time.”
There is still some jockeying to be done on the bobsled side, as six drivers are paired with athletes from the 12-member corps of brakemen and crew. Coach Todd Hays said the team will do physical testing in Calgary to ensure fitness prior to making those decisions.
If that all goes as expected, it looks like Humphries will be paired with former Olympic hurdler Phylicia George, while Alysia Rissling and Heather Moyse will share a sled and Christine de Bruin will be pushed by Melissa Lotholz.
On the men’s side, there should be no splitting up Kripps and Alex Kopacz. They teamed up for four World Cup two-man medals: a gold, two silver and a bronze. Kripps’ other medal, a silver, came with Jesse Lumsden on the brakes.
“Alex did a phenomenal job this year and Jesse did a great job too when he was on the sled,” Kripps said. “The coaches make the decisions. I don’t know what they’ll do, but we had a successful season with both of those guys.”
Hays is leaning toward keeping Kripps and Kopacz together.
“If they stay healthy and are firing on all cylinders, that’s certainly what it looks like,” he said.
That could put Neville Wright in pilot Chris Spring’s sled, as the two paired up for World Cup gold and silver, and Lascelles Brown in Nick Poloniato’s rig. There are even more moving pieces in the four-man sleds, and those combinations will also be decided after fitness testing.