GOLDEN BOYS
Canadian bobsledders happy to share the spoils after finishing in rare dead heat with Germans.
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— They travelled more than four kilometres in four separate runs over two days in a race that happens but once every four years. And yet, when the top two-man bobsleds from Canada and Germany completed that gauntlet Monday — after they steered their sleds at speeds of 135 km/h at the Olympic sliding centre — the best digital timing devices available could not tell their results apart.
Justin Kripps, the Canadian driver from Summerland, B.C., figured he and brakeman Alexander Kopacz had won. He thought this mostly because when he pulled his rig into the finish house at the Olympic Sliding Centre at the conclusion of the fourth run, he saw a big No. 1 flash beside his name — which is usually a good sign. Kripps had begun the fourth and final run of the competition with a lead of six-hundredths of a second over German driver Francesco Friedrich. And while bobsled drivers aren’t privy to real-time data about how their time compares to the field as they’re navigating the course, Kripps said he felt he was doing a near-optimal job.
“It was essentially almost perfect,” Kripps said. “It was my best run I’ve put down. And when I got to the bottom, I was like, ‘Well, whatever the result, I’m happy with that because I did my best.’ And then I saw the No. 1 and I basically blacked out.”
But if Kripps and Kopacz had won, why were the Germans, Friedrich and Thorsten Margis, reacting so ecstatically at the finish?
“Everybody started mobbing into the track. I saw the Germans — they were so excited, too. And I thought, ‘That’s nice. They’re really excited that we won,’ ” Kripps said, laughing. “And we’re all good friends. And once the mob dispersed a little bit and (Friedrich) was in my ear . . . ‘We tied.’ I was like, ‘We tied?’ ”
Yes, they’d tied with a cumulative fourheat time of three minutes, 16.86 seconds. But there would be no overtime, no runoff, no mechanism to settle the deadlock. It took Kripps’ brakeman Kopacz even longer to realize the strange contradiction — that they’d tied, and yet they’d also won. At the Olympics. For gold.
“A couple of minutes later in the change room I asked the German guys again, ‘So, I’m not understanding here. Did we win?’ ” Kopacz said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah. But we tied.’ ”
“It was my best run . . . then I saw the No. 1 and I basically blacked out.” CANADIAN BOBSLEDDER JUSTIN KRIPPS
Eventually, everybody involved realized the impending reality: That both the Canadians and the Germans would soon enough be standing atop a podium together to receive identical gold medals for their identical times. Latvia’s Oskars Melbardis and Janis Strenga took bronze in 3:16.91.
Said Friedrich: “After we told them the third time, then they (got) it — we had a tie.”
Said Kopacz: “It’s pretty insane. What are the odds?”
They’re actually not as remote as one might expect. There’ve been other dead heats in Olympic bobsled; in the 1968 Olympics, when one occurred between Italy and Germany, the Italian team was solely awarded gold (and the Germans settled for silver) because the Italians had the fastest individual run, a tiebreaking protocol that has since been abandoned (luckily for the Canadians, who didn’t own the fastest run on any one of the four days but won with their consistency).
And it was 20 years ago this week that another Canadian two-man bobsled, competing at the Nagano Olympics, won a gold medal in a dead heat — at the time just the second in the history of the Olympics. That gold-medal-winning duo was spearheaded by Pierre Lueders — the legendary driver who competed for Canada in five Olympics and who, after his retirement following the 2010 Games, turned his attention to mentoring a promising young Canadian named Justin Kripps.
“He tied for a gold medal 20 years ago. Eight years ago he taught me how to drive a bobsled after he retired. And now here we are, tying for a gold medal. I just can’t believe it,” Kripps said, speaking of Lueders. “He was super key. He taught me the fundamentals. He spent two years teaching me how to drive. He’s a legend in the sport. He’s one of the best of all time. And getting that base to start with really allowed me to be where I am right now.”
If Lueders wasn’t involved in Monday’s celebration, perhaps it’s because he’s coaching at these Olympics for the host country; the Korean sled finished sixth, more than a half second off the pace.
“I don’t even know if we’re allowed to talk to him,” Kripps said of his mentor.
The evolution of a bobsled driver can unfold at a crawl. Kripps, who ran track in university, was first recruited to try out for the national team back in 2006. After serving his apprenticeship as a brakeman in Lueders’ four-man rig that finished fifth at the Vancouver Olympics,
“I don’t even know if we’re allowed to talk to him.” JUSTIN KRIPPS CANADIAN GOLD MEDALLIST, ON MENTOR PIERRE LUEDERS, COACHING THE KOREANS
Kripps switched to piloting in the summer of 2010. But it wasn’t until 2014 that he won his first World Cup race — a triumph that made his sixth-place result at the Sochi Olympics a disappointment.
Sochi, mind you, was a disappointment for the entirety of Canada’s men’s program. While Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse were commanding attention by winning their second straight gold medal in the two-woman event, all six Canadian men’s sleds failed to reach the podium in 2014.
But Kripps has found success between then and now — in part, he said, because he drummed up the financial support necessary to procure the state-of-the-art sled that’s required to be a contender. He topped the World Cup standings heading into these Games, with Friedrich running a close second. Last year Kripps won silver in the two-man event at the world championships.
And even before the competition began here, Kripps was bullish about his prospects at the Olympic Sliding Centre.
“One of the luge coaches came up to me in the dining hall (before the event) and said, ‘You guys are going to feel right at home here because the ice looks just like Whistler.’ If that’s the case then we’re excited because Whistler always has supersmooth, really fast ice,” Kripps said.
Speaking of Whistler, for all the post-race pandemonium there likely would be no Jon Montgomery-esque parade through the streets of Pyeongchang with duelling pitchers of beer for Kripps and Kopacz. They’re both expected to compete for Canada in the four-man competition that wraps up on the final day of the Olympics. Training for the four-man was slated to begin Tuesday.
“Unfortunately it’s a very short celebration for the fellows and we get back to work on Tuesday,” said Jesse Lumsden, a member of the four-man sled.
A short celebration, but an unusually crowded one.
“It was actually a really special moment. You just became Olympic champions. The bobsled community is really tight. We’ve been friends and rivals with these (Germans) for years,” Kripps said. “They’ve had a lot of success, and we’re starting to as well. They’re genuinely happy for us, and we’re happy for them, too.”