Bobsled Is Actually INSANE transcript

What's up, guys? Jason Kelce here and we are in Park City, Utah at the Team USA bobsledding headquarters. You're going to pull five or six G's. I thought it would be way wider. Oh, he fits. We're good to go for tomorrow. And we are going to see if I'm cut out to be a bobsledder. How confident? Oh my god. I feel negative confident right now. This video is brought to you by The Home Depot. How doers get more done. What's up guys?

Jason Kelce here and we are in Park City, Utah at the Team USA bobsledding headquarters. I'm with the head coach Chris Fogt, director of high performance Kurt Thomas. Perfect. Perfect. Um, and we are going to see if I'm cut out to be a bobsledder. A lot of our athletes come from football, other sports. They transfer into bobsleds. We're going to run you through a sprint, some jump. So, you might not be good enough, but let's at least try.

Let's have some faith. Openminded. Openminded. That spoken like a true coach. There we go. Sport of bobsled was born in the Swiss Alps. It made its Olympic debut in 1924 with the four men event. Since then, the United States has become one of the most decorated nations in the sport. third all time in Olympic medals, 28 total, including seven gold. Let's go USA, baby. So, what we're going to do today, and Bob said, we always say there's three things make a good push athlete.

Speed, power, and strength. We're going to do a sprint, then we're going to do a vertical jump. So, this is speed, the power, then we're going to do a a broad jump into the sand pit. Into the sand. Nice. My crunch rep. My crunches. Oh, yeah. Sitting really good right now. So for the sport of bobsled, we run a 30 meter sprint and a really good time for our men's World Cup or Olympic team is 3.55 to 3.80. Two points, 80% this first. 448 my Yeah.

Wow. He ran 4.48. 48. Acknowledging he's wearing new shoes. It was a warm-up, so we're hoping to get him maybe a 3-9 on this next sprint is the goal. 3.98. He hit it. That was pretty good. 3.98. So, we're going to transfer over to the vertical jump. Cool. So, again, we start with a a really heavy bob and try and get it moving as quickly as possible. Explosive speed is extremely important. explosive power. Usually 34 and higher.

Our best athlete go 43 in, but most our guys are in the high 30s for vertical. 29.7. Sounds about right. See, I didn't get worse. 300. Let's go. We got 3.0. That was good. 30 on the dot. That was the goal. Toes before the front or the back of the line? I like that. Always trying to find that edge. Let's go at the front. An extra inch could make a huge difference. Back of the line. All right. Back of the line. All right.

Right. All righty. That looked better. All right. That was better. 98. 98. All right. Thank gosh. Well, you did well enough where we're not afraid. You will, you know, pull something or get hurt trying to push a bob sled. So, now what we do in the offseason, we have a bobsled on wheels that you can train at. So, what we'll do is the start house is right up here. So, uh, take a few minutes and we'll learn how to push downhill.

Sounds fun. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. We're going to give you a training suit, okay, for yourself to wear to keep you warm. Is this the standard grade of a start? Every single track in the world. Wow. Let's meet the team. First up, the pilot Frank Del Duca. He steers the sled and memorizes every inch of the track. Once we get moving, he's the first one in and the one guiding us down at 80 plus miles an hour.

In the middle seats are Josh and Boone. Job is simple. Explode off the start and get the sled moving as fast as possible before they load in. Bringing us home is Charlie Volker, the brake man. He's the last one in, which means the sled is moving its fastest when he jumps in. He needs power to start it, speed to catch it, and at the bottom, he's the one who stops it. So, I'm going to have one of our uh Chuck here push one down.

You kind of see what right looks like. Now, does this sled weigh pretty much the same thing as a normal sled? About the same. Yeah. It just it feels a little different because it's not on ice, so it's a little more of a friction. Yeah. So, that Kurt was just saying, the axle here. So, when you when you do your load, take a step, and then just do a step and and kneel. Eyes over hands, arms straight from your elbow up to your shoulder.

You're just going to take a couple steps, curl those hips. How confident? I feel negative confident right now. There you go. Nice. Okay. You're going to want to look If you look too far up, you're going to be running up. Yeah. But you don't want to look down searching for coins at the bottom cuz then you're down here and you're pushing down. Yep. So you want to be looking ideally probably about here. Right in front of the sled.

Got it. Not right down here. A little out there. Yeah, buddy. All right, now you go for very first ride. First ride. Here he goes. Oh, almost went over the edge there. Watch out. Why you out of the way? Getting in was uh was hairy for sure. It was eyes wide open when it was time to get in that thing. Good. Holy. Get up, Jace. Get He's good. He's good. That was almost a disaster. I don't know if I hit the sled when I was trying to get in.

Yeah, you might hit your foot first when you kind of slip you up. Great job catching yourself. And now you know, even if a little slip, you can if you're in the sled, pull yourself in, you'll be just fine. Good. Much better. Something you did really well is you have really good low heel recovery here and you have a really good shin angle. So you can see that you're pushing the sled forward. The only very small correction I would give you is you're a little bit too far over the sled.

So do you see where your eyes are relation to hands? Yes. Back it up just a couple inches. You can see that you're looking out to see where you are in relation to the track. Don't need to do that. Don't need to do that. Now, the problem is I have big eyebrows. So, in order to see further out, once you hit it, you guys have to have fast feet to catch up to it. It's like being a sprinter in the blocks. You're like a coiled cage tiger prepared to go.

As soon as you come out, you got to bring those hips and those feet with you. So, it's not just upper body. It's you bring those hips, take a nice long first step, and start to run as fast as you can. Got it. There you go. Good. There you go. There you go. That was it, Jason. All right, there you go with those hands there, man. So, it took him, you know, four or five times, some trial and error, but uh with all sports, obviously, he's a good athlete.

He caught himself and he kept at it. had some patience and he's handling it very very well. That was very impressive. Sit. Back sit. Ready. How was that cadence? A metronome. Very similar to a football cadence. I like it. Set backit. Ready. So the breakman saying set is just saying, "Hey, I see you back here. We're good." Me hitting the sled is I got you. I'm good, too. And then he says, "Back setit. Ready. We go with the same case that we did it right here." Perfect.

Yeah. And you'll say set back ready. Set back ready. All right. Fires up. Set back. Ready. Go. Jay, there you go, buddy. That is way more fun. You want to try going with the boys down one? Let's go about 80 85. Don't Don't blow them up. Load at the crest. Back ready. Back. Ready. Back. Ready. Back. Ready. Back. Ready. Took us about 1 hour. You went from almost being on your face to loaded with a four team. So, that was very, very good.

Very, very good. All right. Well, uh, now let's head down to the garage. We're actually, now that we feel comfortable with you taking a ride tomorrow, okay, kind of pass this test. You'll get in the sled and make sure you feel comfortable how you'll ride down the track. Sounds good, coach. Okay, great. Let's go. This is blowing my mind that this is not sharp. I thought for sure it was like hockey stuff. You're going to pull five or six G's and you're going to be going 80 miles an hour by corner six. 80 miles an hour.

Yeah. I had no idea what I was in store for just maybe like 83 84 miles an hour. You want to come sit in the four man? We can kind of show you how it was going to feel like. Sorry. Yeah. No, you're good. So, you're going to ride three? Yep. So, Frankie's going to hop in the pilot seat. Okay. Uh we can go without helmets for now, just to sit in. He's gonna go too. Oh, wow. And then he jumps. He'll be in. He'll be kind of around you.

And that's how you ride down the track tomorrow. So, I'm going first. That's a put your feet on the outside there. Yep. Heels there. Go forward a little bit. Yep. I just felt his foot like in my arm. Okay. Good guy. And then grab the frame. Oh, he fits. We're good to go for tomorrow, guys. Oh, yeah. So, you'll be just like that. I feel really We're becoming really close, guys. Set it. Ready? That's fast, boys. That's real fast.

Good. All right. Great job today. Phenomenal. Combine pushing. Everything looks really good. So, you graduate from here. Now you're going to the top of the hill down the ice. It' be awesome. That thing is flying. That's serious. Yeah. I don't think she heard me. Are you ready to go down now? I mean, listen. I'm ready to my pants. Yeah. Why not? Why not? Set. No. Pilot, get out. Oh my god. Take a step back. Oh my gosh.

Who was number two? I don't know. There's somebody else. Oh my god. Sorry. Like Well, it looked like it was a mechanical malfunction. For some reason, that handle wasn't Yeah, it wasn't locked in. Yeah, that's not Hopefully. That's not something you see. They did not crash that. His his push bar broke. Yeah, you saw the whole thing collapse down with no driver or did something. So, that's going to be a rough ride. We had something very unique happen today.

Yeah. This is Quinton. Is it Jason K? Good reaction, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I know. So, you've So, I guess explain kind of what happened. Well, from your perspective. Yeah. No, I mean, it was just a normal load. I hopped on the bunk. Next thing I know, I see the driver just laying flat on his back. I was like, I either get in or I hop off. I just hopped in. Yeah. And I was like I was sitting there. I was like, you know, in football you kind of black out on this place.

Same thing happen. You just kind of hop in the pilot seat. I grabbed the D-rings before one and just kind of took it out. I've driven the track before, but Well, good move. Yeah. No, for sure. How How did uh How did it drive? Smooth. I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure Ryan doesn't think so, but yesterday we gave you a training suit as you were just training. Since you completed the training, you're now ready to take a bob sled ride.

Okay. So, again, we kind of talked a little bit about this yesterday. The cool thing about being with team USA and sliding for the country is you get to wear that on your chest versus a bird or a knight or an eagle or something like that. You get team USA. So, we got you one of these. Something I've always been jealous of. Football doesn't get that opportunity. This is great. Feel like something bad could happen. Fear is probably five, six.

As long as I can handle the G-forces, which I'm very I've been told are much more intense than I'm ready for. So, go. Let's go, baby. Who's going first? We'll give y'all a little nudge. All right, we'll let Frank hop in first. Yeah. Is it the grooves? Let's go, Jace. Heels. Yep. Going there. Yep. You're in the grooves. Put that butt for a little bit. There you go. The track is now clear at the bump. Let's start. Got the green light.

Let's go, baby. Come on, baby. Here we go, baby. Sled and track. Sled and track from the bobsled start. Heat. Heat. Yeah, baby. Oh my god. Holy Oh my god. That's it, baby. Holy. That was so intense. That's cool, man. I'm glad I'm glad you enjoyed the five initiation. Yeah, that was intense. Glad you enjoyed. Good driving. I had no idea how you knew what I'm doing. Like first couple turns. Oh, this is kind of fun. I was like, "Holy man, brother." Yeah, that was awesome.

That was a lot of fun. I don't know if you noticed. Oh my god. I didn't even I was looking at everything else. What is one thing you think you know that you were most surprised about the sport of bobsled? Oh man, most surprised about I do think going down the track is probably the most surprising and maybe it's just cuz it's like so burned into my head recently to me like I thought oh kind of be like a roller coaster like going around.

It's nothing like a roller coaster. It feels like it's one of those things that you really don't know what it feels like until you do it. It is like it is pulling you down into that thing and at the same time you're flying. Well, just from our end from the whole team again, you were very impressive with your you know your skills and I think I think that's the cool thing about sports. There's a lot of crossover and respect between different types of sports.

We all have different skills. Again, I thought you did a great job yesterday. Coach, thank you so much for having me. It's been an honor to see how the training takes place, all the things that it takes to actually do this sport. Good luck. Good luck in the games, in the worlds, all of it. Uh, go USA, baby. Shout out to the Home Depot for sponsoring this video.