Hanley athlete aiming to be in 2022 Olympics
Hanley’s Johnson competing at world junior bobsled championship
Julie Johnson needed a bobsled.
She’d spent a lot of time on conveyances that weren’t hers. They cost money, and she has this Olympic dream, and people she knows told her about a man in Latvia who makes and sells them.
Johnson, who grew up in Hanley, threw on the business persona she’s had to learn quickly as she moves up the Canadian bobsled ranks, because most of this crazy pursuit is self-funded.
“They’re built per person. It’s not like you go to the bobsled store and buy what you need,” says the 25-year-old Johnson, who will pilot a two-woman crew at the world junior bobsled championship Saturday in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
“It’s a little bit of dealing. You kind of become like an international business person when you’re buying anything in the sport, because this sport is a lot larger in Europe. You learn different languages; you communicate with people you’ve never met before and wire-transfer them large sums of money, hoping you’re going to get out of it what you just sent.”
Johnson raised funds, got help from sponsors and eventually received her new bobsled — the same type used by some of Canada’s top competitors.
“It helped close that gap, which has been 110 per cent worth it,” she says.
“A top competitive sled is worth over $50,000 Canadian, and the steel we run on ... you need multiple sets to go on different weather and track conditions, and those can be up to and over 10 grand. It’s not a cheap sport, but that’s the investment you put in yourself to get where you want to be.”
That investment extends to the world championship, which is also self-funded. She and B.C.-born teammate Kori Hol landed the berth just a couple weeks ago, and they’re raising funds to cover the cost of their excursion, which will see them be the first team chosen to represent Canada at the world juniors since 2011.
As to the why, it’s simple: Johnson is preparing for a run at the 2022 Olympics. She has always been one of those adventurous types, sports-wise — she played on the six-man football team while going to high school in Hanley, and was on the track squad at UBC until she injured her knee.
In March 2014, she found herself with a degree and looking for the next thing in life. She was in Whistler, B.C., and went to the sliding centre, where they have a program for tourists wanting to take a ride on a bobsled.
Her pilot? Olympic gold-medallist Kaillie Humphries. The ride? Scary. The outcome? Well, she’s in Switzerland four years later, representing Canada internationally.
“(Whistler is) the fastest track in the world, and a lot of people will describe the run as being hurled down a big hill in a garbage can,” Johnson says of that first ride. “Everyone describes it a little different, so I didn’t know what to expect.
“I was nervous, but having a really successful pilot dampens that. It was only about a 45-second run, and I don’t remember a ton of details, because it’s such a shock to your system. (My eyes) were closed, and I probably didn’t breathe for that minute. The last corner in Whistler is a big corner, and there’s a lot of G-force, and it presses you down. You’re thinking, ‘Oh no, what have I done? I need this to end!’ Then you come out and say, ‘OK, I did it.’ A big sigh of relief.”
She quickly decided this was something she wanted to do. She went into pilot school to see if she liked driving, and she took to it naturally.
Johnson is Canada’s fourthranked female bobsled driver. She works closely with, among others, Lyndon Rush, a fellow Saskatchewan product who competed at two Olympics and won bronze in 2010. Rush is now a national team coach.
“When I go down a hill, I don’t think that I’m going 150 kilometres an hour and that it’s superfast and super-scary ... anymore. I definitely did when I started,” says Johnson, who had some crashes in the early going while learning her craft.
“But now, it’s a place where I can literally put everything on a shelf. It’s me on the ice for a minute, figuring things out. It’s evolved from fun and taking a risk, to a calm place in your mind where you can keep improving. There’s no such thing as a perfect run, which is a double-edged sword, because you’re always trying to get a perfect run, but you can’t. So you try to improve, to learn, to challenge yourself, and to get faster.”
And she has her own sled, which she loves, and which she drives at breakneck speeds.
“It’s tough, because you bang it around a lot, and you know it’s worth so much. It’s pretty special,” she says.
That sled remains in Canada this week; Johnson and Hol are renting a sled in Europe to save money, because it’s expensive to transport those things from one continent to another.
People wanting to follow along, or to help them financially, can visit the team online at facebook.com/bobteamjohnson.
The race goes Saturday in St. Moritz, and they get six runs leading up to the big day.
Johnson enjoys being a bobsledder from Saskatchewan, she says, and her peers in the sport also enjoy that connection.
“There’s a lot of hill jokes,” Johnson says with a laugh.