This is a picture from the 1930’s of Katherine Dewey.
An American bobsledder.
Back then, bobsleds looked kind of like a toboggan crossed with a go-kart.
Much different than the sleds we see today.
Dewey often competed as a pilot, or driver, in 4-person bobsledding events.
And in 1940, she won first place in a national championship.
And after that, women were banned from driving four-men in sleds.
Like banned, you know, because whatever our uterus would fall out
we wouldn't be able to have babies, who the heck knows.
Yes... who knows.
Dewey was never allowed to compete in the Olympics.
In fact, it wasn’t until 2002 that female bobsledders
were invited to participate in the Games.
But only in one event.
Since 1932, men have had two.
But this year a new women-only event was introduced.
The monobob.
So, does this event actually level the playing field?
There's three components to race.
There's the driving, the equipment, and the push.
Three main components to bobsledding and you do not mention braking at all.
From the outside, all types of bobsledding look straight forward.
Athletes push a sled, jump in, and let gravity pull them down an icy, windy track
at speeds averaging 135 kilometers per hour.
After 4 runs, the times are added together and the fastest sled wins.
The run can look smooth to spectators
but inside the sled it’s a brutal and technical event.
Like being put in a trashcan and just thrown off a hill.
Yes, bobsled is terrifying.
Bobsled athletes traditionally competed in teams of two or four.
The women in pairs. The men in pairs and quartets.
The person at the front is the pilot.
They navigate the sled down the track using a pulley system.
If you want to go left, you pull towards the left.
If you want to go right, you pull towards the right.
But they also have to make sure their navigating the run as smoothly as possible.
You want to make sure that you're not driving so hard that you're
cutting the ice and causing all this friction on the ice.
Sleds move so quickly down the track, that pilots have to rely on muscle memory,
You have to make sure you memorize and know each and every track as a pilot.
They're all different, you know.
Some have 20 curves, some have 15, some have 14, the curves go different ways.
In a 4-person sled, the two center athletes are push-athletes
named because they help push the sled at the start.
And the athlete at the back is the brakeman but...
The brakeman does not pull the brakes on the way down.
Their job is to help push the sled and get it up to speed at the beginning of the race.
Get in and get down.
Where their head, as low as possible, aerodynamic as possible.
And... maybe pray?
All the way down, just please don't crash, please don't crash, please don't crash.
Oh, and pull the brake at the end.
Despite the similarities, the 3 types of bobsledding
are much different in terms of equipment and technique.
The four-man sled kind of feels more like driving a Mack truck.
The two-man is probably more like a sports car
and monobob is probably in this comparison more like a motorcycle on ice.
All sleds have specific minimum and maximum weight limits.
The heavier the sled, the faster you go, but the harder it is to get going at the beginning.
There are a few other regulations for safety.
Like how thick and warm the runners can be
the overall size and material used to make the sled.
But other than that, 2 and 4-person bob teams
are allowed to adjust their sleds to maximize aerodynamics.
It's kind of like NASCAR.
They have rules and regulations for every bit of the sled.
But of course, every mechanic tries to find the gray area and bend that rule.
And bending the rules is a lot easier when money is on your side.
Top teams can pay engineers to research and design faster sleds.
They tap into technology from Formula 1 racing and even aerospace engineering.
When all is said and done, the price tag for a sled could be over $100,000 USD.
Previous years, we were in BMW two-man sleds and they cost over $250,000 each
with research and development and people like that.
The technological advantage speaks for itself.
If you look at a list of teams that have medaled at the Olympics for bobsledding over the years
it gets repetitive very quickly
with 5 countries really dominating the podium.
So unless you can put that kind of money behind it
you're going to be defeated before you even get to the starting blocks.
But not for the monobob.
The monobob, everybody has the exact same sled.
A monobob sled costs around $15,000, a much more affordable price tag.
Not to mention countries only need to train and fund travel for a single athlete
which makes the sport much more accessible.
So in one way...
It levels the playing field and it really just leaves the sport into pushing and driving.
This has already proven to change the game.
In the 2021 World Series athletes from Jamaica and Brazil both earned medals.
But...
The downside of the monobob is it only gives one more medal opportunity to the pilot.
Which means women still only get half the opportunity to medal that men get.
And for us, especially in the US,
we have a lot of really great athletes that come into the sport year after year.
But without that opportunity to medal again at the Games, you know, we lose a lot of people.
Plus the amount of work that goes into moving
and prepping sleds behind the scenes requires more than a single athlete.
It's a really a team effort and that's what kind of breaks my heart.
We can't do this without them.
But you're not going to see them on the podium.
Adding the monobob did give women another opportunity.
But there’s no denying that it’s not equal, not yet.
But the sport itself hasn’t ever been equal. Not really.
It does open a door for more participation.
Do I think it's right? No, but I just don't think there's enough for the men to even start
to even have a fight for the women.
Bobsledding prices are so high
that many nations can’t even afford to send a 4-person men's team to compete.
I would have loved to see it for the women and you know them trying to go for four-man.
I think it would have just been really boring because it would have been the
same countries winning every weekend, the ones that can afford it, right?
So it’s a step in the right direction, and for now
at least for the monobob, may the best woman win.