Beijing 2022 - Bobsled

There’s nothing quite like driving a 1,400-pound sled down an icy track at 90 mph. Bobsled (also called bobsleigh) developed in the 1880s in Switzerland and has been an Olympic sport since the first Winter Games in 1924. The lone exception was in 1960, when organizers elected not to build a track.

Much has changed over that last century, in particular the sleds. Today’s bobsleds are a feat of engineering — sleek projectiles, built on steel frames with fiberglass or carbon fiber bodies, that can fly down the track so fast they’re said to produce similar g-forces as riding in a fighter jet.

Another change is the gradual inclusion of women. Four-man bobsled has been around from the start, with a two-man event joining the program in 1932. But it wasn’t until 2002 that the two-woman bobsled event was included at the Winter Games. A second women’s event, the single-person monobob, will make its Olympic debut in Beijing.

Germany and Switzerland are the sport’s traditional powers, but Team USA is coming on fast, especially with the success of its women in recent years. The U.S. has 25 total medals, tying Germany for second all-time. Switzerland leads all countries with 31 medals, but Germany tops the list with 13 gold medals, just ahead of Switzerland’s 10 and Team USA’s seven.

An American woman has medaled in all five Olympics with a women’s event; Team USA leads all countries with six women’s medals. Elana Meyers Taylor has played a role in winning three of those medals, from 2010 to 2018. Kaillie Humphries matches that medal total, though she did so as a member of Team Canada prior to switching to Team USA. Both are expected to be medal contenders in the two-woman and monobob events in Beijing. The U.S. men last medaled in 2014 and will face steep competition from the likes of the Germans, Austrians and Latvians, among others.

Bobsled and the other sliding sports, luge and skeleton, will be contested at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre, which is part of the Yanqing cluster of venues located in the mountains 45 miles northwest of Beijing. The track is notable for being the first in the world to include a 360-degree turn.

Updated on January 28, 2022.