Holcomb sets out in defense of world bobsled gold

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) -- Steven Holcomb ended last season with a gold medal around his neck, strains of the Star-Spangled Banner echoing off nearby mountains.

America’s best bobsledder plans to end this season the same way.

The World Cup season for four-man bobsledding starts Saturday high in the Utah mountains, where Holcomb and his team pushing the “Night Train” sled will try to recapture the magic that brought the 2009 world championship. That ended a 50-year drought for the U.S., and later this winter in Whistler, British Columbia, Holcomb will try to deliver what would be his country’s first Olympic four-man gold since 1948.

On Saturday, Holcomb will see how his team stacks up to open this Olympic season.

“The Italians have new Ferrari sleds. The Swiss have new sleds. The Germans have new sleds,” Holcomb said. “I still think we’re at least even with the game if not a little bit ahead, but it’s going to be interesting to see how level the playing field is going to become or if we’re still ahead of them.”

At the end of last season, Holcomb was clearly ahead of everyone else.

The world title is a combined-time event over four runs, and Holcomb, Justin Olsen, Steve Mesler and Curt Tomasevicz had the best time in each of those four trips down the track in Lake Placid, N.Y. They prevailed by 0.97 seconds over the German sled piloted by Andre Lange, the two-time defending Olympic champion in four-man bobsled and also the 2006 gold winner in two-man sledding.

“Couldn’t have happened to a better guy than Holcomb,” U.S. bobsled coach Brian Shimer said.

Taking the title meant plenty to Holcomb.

Beating Lange probably meant just as much.

“He’s the best bobsledder of all time,” Holcomb said.

Being the reigning world champion—Holcomb even sends e-mails with the proud signature, “Sent via the 2009 Bobsled World Champion’s Blackberry”— comes with a fair amount of pressure, that proverbial bulls-eye since his is the sled everyone on the circuit will be chasing, especially in an Olympic year.

Holcomb’s team doesn’t mind whatsoever.

They’ve done a slew of photo shoots in advance of this season, given more interviews than they could count, even had people embedded with them for days at a time in recent weeks to see what makes them tick.

“I don’t really think of it as pressure,” Holcomb said. “I’m kind of laid-back, easy going when it comes to that stuff.”

That’s an approach not often seen in bobsledding, but it’s proven vital to the team’s success.

The marriage between bobsled drivers and push athletes is often short. The makeup of who’s in what sled gets tinkered with all the time, with drivers and coaches both trying to find the best mix of people to work together.

Holcomb has kept his team together for two years, the value of which he doesn’t understate.

“I know exactly how this guy is going to act, how that guy is going to react in a situation, who you can count on, who you can’t count on,” Holcomb said. “There’s so many factors that go into the teamwork angle. It’s pretty important that you’ve been together for a long time.”

Holcomb isn’t the only accomplished driver on the U.S. roster. Veteran Olympian Todd Hays is gearing up for another run at that elusive gold medal that he nearly captured on the Park City track in 2002, and upstart John Napier is generally considered to be the future leader of the U.S. bobsled program.

“These guys are great competitors. … Definitely the deepest U.S. team I’ve seen in my career,” Hays said.

For now, though, all eyes are on Holcomb and his team.

“We enjoy it,” Holcomb said. “It’s fun to be the guys everybody wants to come see.”

And the guys everybody is trying to beat.