Another bobsled try for Jones
Track and field star faces stiff competition to earn spot in her 4th Olympics
PARK CITY – Lolo Jones knows the moral of the story, has heard the advice from her coach over and over.
But as she tries to make her fourth Olympic team, Jones still has Brian Shimer repeat it from time to time. So he tells her how it took him five Olympics to get his medal and how he could have walked away without it.
“Honestly, the peace I’ll have at the end of this journey, whether I medal or not, Olympic champion or not, is knowing that I did everything I could to get this medal until I had no more,” Jones said last month. “That’s how I’ll be able to lay my head down at night and have peace.
“Every time I have doubts and fears, I just go to him and I’m just like, hey, tell me your story. He was the first person that had a talk with me when I came to bobsled.”
Ultimately, Shimer got what Jones still seeks.
After four previous Olympics, Shimer piloted his four-man sled to a bronze medal in Salt Lake City in 2002. Then 39 and not favored to medal, Shimer helped the USA end a 46-year drought in that event.
“I knew at that point I had done everything in my power and I was going to be good with however it ended, and it obviously turned out to end a great fairytale for me,” Shimer said. “Just passed that along. You never know. You’ve got to continue to give it everything you got.”
Jones has come close. She was favored to win the 100-meter hurdles in Beijing but clipped the ninth of 10 hurdles and fell to seventh. She finished fourth in London.
After that, Jones tried out for bobsled.
She was a controversial pick for Sochi, where she pushed for Jazmine Fenlator in the USA-3 sled and finished 11th.
Since Sochi, she alternated between track and field and bobsled until committing full-time to her winter sport for the past year. Jones has gained 25 pounds from her track weight – she jokes, “I no longer have abs” – and has to focus on consuming enough to maintain it.
“Honestly, in track and field, I felt like if I had a candy bar, my season would be over,” she said. “I really did not eat any sweets. In bobsled, I can have double bacon cheeseburgers. I’m just pounding the calories down.”
Jones got on three World Cup podiums last season, including pushing Elana Meyers Taylor’s sled to silver in Pyeongchang.
The time in the sled has helped,
Shimer said.
“She’s got the experience as a bobsledder, where coming into Sochi, she was pretty green, just a lot of raw talent that wasn’t refined,” he said.
The question now is whether Jones’ talent and experience can get her on the U.S. team in what is a tough competition with other brakemen.
Meyers Taylor won a world championship last season with newcomer Kehri Jones. Aja Evans, who took bronze in Sochi as a brakeman in Jamie Greubel Poser’s sled, returns as well. And Lauren Gibbs, who is trying to make her first Olympic team, pushed Meyers Taylor and Greubel Poser in podium finishes in the first two World Cups of the season.
“We’ve got five or six brakemen that would be number one for any other nation,” Shimer said, “so it’s gonna be a very difficult decision.”
The U.S. team will try different combinations of brakemen and pilots throughout the World Cup season before naming a team in January.
“I’m trying to be paired with somebody I would be complimentary with, and there is a lot of pressure that comes with being with a teammate,” she said. “Because in track and field, if I have a bad performance, it’s all me. … But now you have a bad performance, you’re letting somebody else down.”
Jones felt that way at an IBSF World Cup here last month, taking bronze as the brakeman for Meyers Taylor.
Meyers Taylor, a two-time Olympic medalist and the defending world champion, is the fastest pilot in the sport. After a slow start in snowy conditions on their first run, the pair posted the fastest start time of the day to get on the podium.
“I think with her track speed, she adds that velocity to the back of the sled, and that’s the biggest thing we’re looking for is making sure to carry down the track,” Meyers Taylor said.
Jones doesn’t know if this is her last chance to try for an Olympic medal. She didn’t rule out trying for another Summer Olympics, but she knows this is her last crack at the Winter Games.
Jones hopes she can perform well enough the next two months to earn a spot in a sled.
“This season can either help motivate me to keep going to track,” she said, “or it can be like after the Games, at the end of the season, I’m just completely wiped. Who knows?”