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US bobsled team trains in Mooresville
MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- Just seven months away from the Olympic winter games in Vancouver and U.S. Olympians are training in the Charlotte area.
The men's and women's bobsled teams are using a wind tunnel in Mooresville to perfect their equipment.
They don't have the budget to do this every year, so they really need to learn as much about their sled, their gear and their body positioning as they can.
And the huge A2 Wind Tunnel in Mooresville is what helps them understand what works and what doesn't.
Veteran team driver Steven Holcomb described how it feels to be in the sled reaching top speeds. "When the speed gets going, as a driver my head is sticking out, and you can hardly hold it still," he said. "It's kind of a weird feeling."
On Wednesday, the U.S. Olympic bobsled team braved speeds of 80 mph. Holcomb says they're trying "everything we can think of to try and gain a couple hundredths of a second."
It doesn't sound like much until you consider that, as Holcomb puts it, "At the Vancouver test track we were two-hundredths out of a gold."
The competition is that close.
And it's this "squeeze every fraction of a second you can" attitude that's helped the team go from "the outhouse to the penthouse," according to head engineer Bob Cuneo.
Since all of the sleds are the same, the trick is to get the equipment right. You don't want anything flopping around in the wind. That creates drag and slows the team down.
After one of the dozens of trials, Cuneo said, "In this case we changed suits and it did not make a change."
Suits, helmets, even body position of the athletes could determine their place on the medal podium.
It was nearly 100 degrees inside the wind tunnel and these guys were in full body under armor suits with thick helmets sweating up a storm. Not a normal environment for a bobsledder.
The team was trying to finish in time to get their workouts in. Many of the guys are former college football players, and if you saw the size of their arms and legs you wouldn't doubt it.
If they're not racing, they're training, year-round.
"It's probably one of the greatest lifestyles in the world," said Holcomb. "You get to travel the world and go sledding every day."
I tried my hand at the wind tunnel. At just 40 mph -- half of what the team was enduring -- I was barely able to keep my feet when walking. No wonder Holcomb says the feeling he gets going down the track is "exciting."
The men's and women's teams were both training. They hope to be a force in the 2010 Olympic winter games this February in Vancouver.
