March 7, 2010
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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There is little more that an amateur athlete craves than one day being called “Olympic Champion”.
To this day, we still proudly recall the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980 when our American men’s hockey team defeated the then powerful communist machine called the Russian men’s hockey team.
This year, the United States won 37 medals, a record for any country in the Winter Olympics. And one of the last medals we won was, in part, due to the love and passion of one NASCAR driver.
Geoff Bodine is one of the Bodine brothers: Todd still races in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series and Brett is the man who pilots that pace car around the track every weekend (he is also the Director of Cost Research at the NASCAR Technical Institute). Geoff counts the Daytona 500 as one of his 18 Cup-series wins; he also has six Nationwide (Busch) Series wins, and hundreds of Modified series wins (including a 55-win season in 1978 that landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Wins in a Season”.)
While all of that is commendable, what he accomplished last week was the culmination of 18 years of hard work driven by a desire to make his country the best in the world in a sport that it hadn’t won a gold medal in since the year before Bodine was born.
In 1992, Bodine noted that the US bobsled team was using sleds imported from Europe in competition. They were struggling to compete with the European teams, and Geoff felt there had to be a way to build them a sled that was not only competitive, but built here in the United States. And he felt that with the help of NASCAR technology, he was the man to build those sleds. With that, and the help of good friend and chassis builder, Bob Cuneo of Chassis Dynamics, the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project was born.
It took a while for the Bo-Dyn bobsleds to produce results, but as the Project marked its tenth anniversary, the US men’s four man team won Bronze and Silver medals in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games and a Gold medal in the women’s competition. According to the Bo-Dyn website “The USA team is now a constant medal winner on the World Cup circuit and the sleds are known as one of the best in the world, if not the best. Their signature is how quiet they are compared to other sleds coming down the mountain.” That “quiet” is created with the help of an aerodynamic design created in part with NASCAR technology.
What is even more impressive about this whole undertaking is, it is done on a not for profit basis. The Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project Inc. is a 501-C3 not for profit Connecticut Corporation, which means that all money goes into the design and build of the bobsleds, and not to pad the pockets of the project members.
Whelen Engineering, a long time sponsor of NASCAR’s All-American Series and modified divisions, came on board in 2000 to help fund the bobsled project, and Whelen Vice President Phil Kurze was named President of the Bo-Dyn bobsled project a year later.
In 2006, Geoff reached out to his NASCAR friends, and began the “Bodine Bobsled Challenge” on the course at Lake Placid, NY, to try and raise even more money to help build a better bobsled. Ken Schrader, Todd Bodine, Kenny Wallace, Dick Trickle, Steve Park, Randy LaJoie, Kevin Lepage, Boris Said, Joel Kauffman and Stanton Barrett made up the first group of NASCAR drivers to take part in the challenge. 2010 NASCAR participants included three-time NASCAR Whelen All American Series national champion Philip Morris, 2009 NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour champion George Brunnhoelzl, and 2006 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Todd Bodine. 2009 Sprint Cup rookie of the year Joey Logano rounded out the group, and won the challenge.
Jump ahead to last week. USA Bobsled 1 with pilot Steve Holcomb (Park City, Utah), Steve Mesler (Buffalo, N.Y.), Justin Olsen (San Antonio, Texas) and brakeman Curt Tomasevicz (Shelby, Neb.), were making a course that had flipped “better” teams like the Germans and Russians look easy as they set track records with their first two runs in the four man competition. Their sleek black sled, nicknamed the “Night Train”, had already won the World Championship, and was now looking to break a 62-year drought at the top of the Olympic podium. Geoff was at the top of the run, cheering the team on as they began their second day of runs to the gold, and Kurze was at the bottom, waiting to greet the team. The Night Train was the last sled to go down the track, and unless there was a major mistake by the team, it appeared they were unbeatable.
When they crossed the finish and the first gold since 1948 years was theirs, I was jumping up and down and crying with joy.
“It was amazing to see a grassroots American team compete and win the gold medal on the world stage,” Kurze said after the victory. Team USA’s bobsleds were designed, built and raced by Americans, which was the goal of everyone involved.”
As for Bodine, who has a Daytona 500 trophy in his trophy case, this was even better than that NASCAR win. “It's the whole country. It's an overwhelming, incredible feeling to know you're a part of something that big. Very few people get to experience that kind of feeling. To be a part of that is just incredible. It's very, very hard to describe. I'm just proud to be an American and proud to be a part of it."
Bodine wasn’t even planning on going to watch the Night Train and other sleds compete in Vancouver, but Team USA requested that he be there. At the end of the day, he was weeping with joy and on the one podium he personally had never expected to be on top of: Team USA pulled Geoff onto the gold medal podium to celebrate with them.
"To see the athletes do well, and especially to see them win that gold medal, it just makes you proud," Bodine said. "It fills you up."
This weekend, it was back to NASCAR for Geoff, but Team USA was right there with him on the track in Atlanta. His truck proudly touted the Bo-Dyn bobsled project on the sides, and there with the name of the project were the names of Holcomb, Mesler, Olsen, and Tomasevicz --the men who used the all-American sled built by the dream of Geoff Bodine to win America Gold. The Night Train is proudly on display at the track, allowing NASCAR fans to see a different kind of machine built with NASCAR ingenuity.
If you would like to help support the Bo-Dyn bobsled project -- and maybe get a little Team Night Train gear to proudly wear in the process, go visit the Bo-Dyn bobsled website: www.bodynbobsled.com.
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