Column: Second-best decision of a lifetime
Park City, Utah, with its ski lifts that reach down to Woodside Avenue, would seem a natural fit for bobsled training. That’s not always the case.
“We had a sliding session scheduled this afternoon,” Whitefish product Gage Smith said Tuesday. “But it was canceled for too much snow. Believe it or not.”
Believe it, because snow isn’t the currency that bobsledders deal in. It is ice that makes those blades glide – that and fast-twitch muscle fiber like you find in college athletes.
Smith was one, a walk-on for the University of Montana football team. Alex Mustard, his roommate at Aber Hall, ran sprints for the Griz track team.
Together they filled out on-line questionnaires for USA Bobsledding last spring. If you’re wondering, Why?, the answer is simple: Why not.
“We knew our athletic careers at the University were going to be coming to an end,” said Smith, whose thirst for competition was no doubt great: He lettered for the Griz in 2017 but lingering effects of two concussions forced him to retire from the sport in 2018.
“The more we looked into it, the more we grew interested,” he added.
Mustard finished his track career with a sixth-place finish in the Big Sky Conference 100 meters last May, but another competitive outlet was just a Google search away.
Within a couple of weeks, Smith said, they had an invitation to “rookie camp,” in Lake Placid, New York. That took place in August.
A lack of funds kept Smith from competing in the ensuing U.S. National Push Championships, but he must have impressed – he was invited back to the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid for another six-week stint.
“The ball has just kept rolling from there,” Smith said, and as proof he can offer up the Park City North American Cup in early December. Smith, Mustard, a former Texas A&M receiver named Boone Niederhofer and three-time Olympian Nick Cunningham teamed up for two silver medals in four-man sleds.
Their “runs” – two to each competition – lasted less than 49 seconds. Four-man sleds reach 90 miles per hour.
“I really like four-man so far,” Smith said. “It’s fun having more moving parts and have more teamwork.”
Emphasis on the work. Currently roughly a dozen sledders are in Park City, getting in lifts, working on their pushes, tweaking their sleds. The team makes adjustments, puts the sled on scabbards and loads it up for a trip up the mountain. Seconds later they’re back where they began.
“It’s a lot of work for the couple minutes of sliding you typically get in the day,” Smith said.
The run is the reward, and it is amazing to think that just a few months ago he was staring at his first one.
“I think I was just excited,” he said. “Obviously there’s a little bit of nerves associated with it. You’re aware of the risks – it could go good and it could go bad. But mostly we were just excited to get in the sled for the first time.”
Smith’s goal, obviously, is the 2022 Olympics. He might be a long shot but he’s all in. He has been online fundraising to help secure a training trip to Europe for three weeks coming up.
If you go to www.gofundme.com/f/gagesmithbobsled you can read his bio in which he calls walking on at Montana, “the greatest decision I have ever made in my life.” Now that he’s traded the Washington-Grizzly Stadium tunnel for a chute, cleats for ice spikes, it might happen that he’s topped that.
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 756-4463 or at fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com. You can also find him @Fritz_Neighbor on Twitter.