Lyndon Rush has been racing down some slippery European slopes this winter with Canada's bobsleigh team. But it was back in Canada just last weekend, when the Humboldt-born athlete finally tasted victory.
Rush and brakeman Jesse Lumsden won the two-man bobsleigh race at the World Cup in Whistler, February 4.
Rush is the driver for Team Canada One, the team that won a bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh event at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Next time, the team plans to "go for the gold" at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
In the meantime, the Canadian bobsleigh team is competing in as many events as they can during the 2011-2012 season. Rush recently gave the Journal an update on the team's progress.
"The European part of the bobsleigh tour is over," Rush said. "Now we are on home soil for the last two World Cups of the year in Whistler and Calgary."
After the Christmas break, the team began its European circuit by attending the World Cup competition in Alternburg, Germany.
"This is an awesome track," Rush said about Altenburg. "It is so technically difficult from the top to the bottom, and when the ice is fast, there is no better feeling than ripping down it in a four-man sled."
But before they had a chance to compete, the Canadian athletes had a major setback during the final day of training for that race when Team Two, led by driver Chris Spring, had a serious accident on the course.
"They crashed in corner No. 15, and their momentum caused them to hit the roof in the following corner," Rush wrote in a communiqué update on the Canadian bobsleigh teams' activities. "Instead of bouncing off the wood planks that are supposed to prevent the sled from flying out of the track, they hit a weak spot and broke right through."
The accident resulted in serious injuries and hospitalisation for three members of the team, and their coach pulled the teams from the competition because he wasn't satisfied with the repairs that had been done to the track after the accident.
Rush wrote that incidents like these remind you of the importance of the bigger picture. With this perspective, he said the whole team really came together and had some great results the following weekend when they attended the World Cup competition in Konigssee, Germany. Their last competition before coming back to Canada was at the final European World Cup in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where Rush says he felt the team started to come together.
"In the four-man where we have been struggling all year long the team started to show what we are capable of with very competitive start times," he said. "Although we finished seventh, we were only 0.20 seconds away from a medal."
After the next World Cup in Calgary, the team heads to Lake Placid, New York, for the World Championships, February 13-26.
