Risky run falls short for Canuck sledders
Canadian icon Pierre Lueders coaches Russia to gold medal in two-man event
With rippled chests, bushy beards and wild hair, they call themselves the mountain men of the Canadian Olympic team.
On Monday, the lumberjacks broke down in tears on the finish deck as the three Canadian sleds placed sixth, seventh and ninth in the twoman bobsled competition at the Sochi Games.
For in truth, three top-10 finishes mean little in the grander Olympic spectrum of gold, silver and bronze — especially in the modern area for Canadian athletes at the Winter Games.
And, in a cruel twist of irony, not 10 metres from the crestfallen Canadians, stood a jubilant Pierre Lueders under the bright lights at the Sanki Sliding Centre.
A five-time Canadian Olympian and the most decorated pilot in Canadian history, Lueders moved to Russia two years ago to coach the bobsled team. Under his watchful eye, Alexander Zubkov and Alexy Voevoda, obliterated the field to win gold on home soil. “Good for him,” muttered pilot Lyndon Rush, the ninth-place finisher with brakeman Lascelles Brown. “I don’t want to say anything bad. He’s a Canadian legend ... He’s coaching the Russians so I’m not really cheering for him. “But I bleed red.” Outside of Lueders, Justin Kripps and rookie Bryan Barnett proved Canada’s best bet to grace the Olympic podium. Sitting in fourth place after three runs — just .09 seconds out of a bronze — Kripps scrapped the conservative approach and decided to go all out on the fourth and final ride down the track.
“I knew that if I just kept doing what I was doing, we could end up fourth,” Kripps said, with Barnett too choked up to talk in the mixed zone. “Fourth to me is the same as sixth. I wanted to get a medal.”
Flying down the icy canyon, Kripps kissed the wall up top and bled time the rest of the way down, allowing the Russian-2 sled to vault into fourth place.
Beat Hefti, of Switzerland, captured silver. American Steven Holcomb won bronze.
When Kripps looks back, he’ll have no regrets.
“We risked it,” said the 27-year-old from Summerland, B.C.
“We wanted to go for it, and we came in sixth.”
Chris Spring and Jesse Lumsden, the retired Canadian Football League running back, combined for a seventh-place finish, and they could hear the Russian crowd cheering their demise all the way down the track.
“That’s just sport,” Lumsden said after taking a moment to compose himself. “Shoot, I’ve been booed all my life on the football field. It doesn’t really bother me that much.
“This is Russia’s Olympics. Four years ago, it was the exact
‘I knew that if I just kept doing what I was doing, we could end up fourth. Fourth to me is the same as sixth. I wanted to get a medal.’
JUSTIN KRIPPS Canadian two-man bobsled pilot
opposite, so that’s the way she goes.”
To Spring, the Olympic experience brought back memories of a 2012 crash in Altenberg, Germany that left him with a gash to the buttocks so deep, the doctors could see the base of his spine.
Spring initially thought he killed his teammates that day, and the mental images came roaring back in the biggest race of his life.
“I think that will be something I’ll battle with my whole career,” the 29-yearold said tearfully.
“I definitely draw on the confidence of my team to help me get through it a lot of the time. It’s just the visuals, the sounds — everything like that. Even just talking about it now gets me pretty upset.
“But it’s something that’s helped me a lot, too. I nearly died that day, and you have to appreciate life more after something like that.”
Next up: All three Canadian pilots have another shot in the four-man competition starting Saturday at the Sanki Sliding Centre.
Once again, Zubkov and Voevoda — and by extension, Lueders — are the favourites to win gold.