Fame Accelerates Bobsledders’ Lives

 

(New York, N.Y.) – You saw them on Letterman, you saw them on the Today show, you might even have seen them at a New York Rangers hockey game – all within a week of winning their Olympic gold medal in the four-man bobsled.

 

Away from the spotlight teamusa.org caught up with the back half of the Night Train: Steve Mesler who sat in the third seat, and brakeman Curt Tomasevicz, who rode in the rear.  

 

Neither had been able to fully process the significance of ending the United States’ 62-year gold-medal drought in their event yet, but they still carried the round, 1.2 lb. reminders of their accomplishment through midtown Manhattan.

 

Mesler pulled a gold medal out of the right front pocket of his jeans, while Tomasevicz removed his own from the left inside pocket of his leather coat, and each recounted the chain of events that followed two days of racing and less than three-and-a-half minutes to victory. 

 

“As soon as the sled stopped [on February 27],” Mesler said, “I didn’t make an independent decision for 36 hours. I tried to go into the crowd to see my parents. I jumped over two fences and got pulled back for the flower ceremony.”

 

After that, came 90 minutes of media interviews near the finish line followed by a more formal press conference at the track. Then Tomasevicz and driver Steve Holcomb were selected for drug testing. 

 

“It was so frustrating sitting in drug testing,” said Tomasevicz who was ready to celebrate. “The clock’s just ticking. I was ready to go, but you still have all the paperwork.”

 

While Mesler and teammate Olsen packed the sled, the US bobsled team leader Scott Novack went back to the athletes’ rooms and rifled through heaps of gear to find the outfits the four men were expected to wear on the podium that night at the medal ceremony in Whistler.

 

When Novack returned, the team changed in the metal container that held their sled, then made their way to the medals plaza. Backstage, they joked with silver medalist Andre Lange of Germany and the bronze-medal driver Lyndon Rush of Canada while a federal agent looked on.

 

“They’re very conscious of the US athletes,” Mesler said. “That agent went everywhere with us.”

 

After another press conference at another media center in Whistler, the team was chauffeured to USA House, a mansion of a log cabin whose floors were so pristine that guests were asked to swap their street shoes for Nike flip-flops. For the next two hours, the team reunited with friends and family who were also sporting wool socks and plastic footwear.

 

At 11pm, the bobsledders returned to the Village, packed, and caught a 1:30am shuttle down to Vancouver, courtesy of NBC. After a two-hour drive, they had still an hour to kill before their live appearance on the Today show. 

 

“We said, ‘If we stop moving, we’re going to die,’” Mesler said.

 

The concierge took each man’s five big blue suitcases, and the team went to Club Budweiser for 25 minutes.

 

“Shannon Bahrke tackled me as soon as I saw her,” Mesler said, referring to the bronze medalist in moguls who had competed in multiple Olympics like himself.

 

By 4:15am, the Night Train crew was in a car on the way to the Today show set. 

 

At 5:30am, the sun was about to rise on Sunday and the whirlwind was over – but only temporarily. 

 

“Mind you, this is the day of the US-Canada gold-medal hockey game,” Mesler said, and asked if their 1pm appointments could be moved up so they could catch the game.

 

No problem.

 

After a three-hour nap, Mesler was on the phone trying to finagle hockey tickets. He called US bobsledding and the Buffalo Sabres, but ultimately it was the company that provided Vancouver’s Olympic security (CSC) that let all four men sit in its luxury box – just four suites away from the box that included US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

 

When the team arrived, Canada was leading, 1-0, en route to its 3-2 overtime victory over the US. 

 

Overtime compressed the athletes’ schedule further and they didn’t have time to go the Olympic Village before the Closing Ceremony. So once again, the team leader traipsed back to their rooms and dug through their laundry to find the four identical navy cardigans, white pants, white socks, and blue boots with red laces for the ceremony. They all met in a locker room at B.C. Place.

 

“Now we’re changing in the guts of the stadium,” Mesler said. “We had about three hours of sleep – which apparently was a lot of sleep for what we had just done.”

 

Once they marched out, Mesler said, “The most amazing part of the entire experience, the coolest moment, and the most humbling part of this – was that half the athletes wanted to come over and take pictures with us. We knew a lot of them already, but the other athletes were excited for what we did. No one’s announcing us; these are your peers.”

 

Of course, he added, “It was like herding cats, trying to get all four of us together.”

 

After the Olympic cauldron was extinguished and the rock-concert concluded, the team swung over to the warehouse-style USA House in Vancouver (where street shoes were allowed) and the ever-popular Irish House across the street.

 

Monday morning, Mesler stayed in Vancouver to do more phone interviews while Tomasevicz hopped on a 3am shuttle to brave the post-Olympic airport crush so he could fly back to Nebraska. 

 

Canada was still delirious about its gold-medal hockey victory, so when Tomasevicz found himself continually waiting in line near the Canadian coach Mike Babcock, he said, “Everyone was staring at him; nobody looked at me. No matter how I felt about my gold medal, I was basically following God through the Vancouver airport.” 

 

After a stopover in Denver, Tomasevicz arrived in Omaha. As soon as he stepped off the plane, two people started clapping, then two more, and as the clapping continued to spread, the applause followed him all the way to the baggage claim.

 

“I’m pretty lucky to come from that region,” Tomasevicz said, adding with a smile, “I don’t have to share the spotlight with anyone.” He was the only Nebraska athlete to make the 2010 US Olympic team – and reportedly the only Nebraskan ever to win a winter Olympic medal.

 

Thanks to his fame, a simple chore took two hours. When Tomasevicz went to the bank, he ran into people he knew and pretty soon, they started calling their friends. After a while, it seemed like most of the 690 people in his hometown of Shelby were at the bank.

 

Next, Tomasevicz went to his father’s office at John Deere, where his dad works as a combine mechanic. (Curt also worked there in junior high and high school, stocking parts and cleaning bathrooms.)  

 

Also that Tuesday, Tomasevicz spoke at one of the largest high schools in Lincoln, and on Wednesday, he was an honored guest at a Nebraska women’s basketball game. The team was ranked No. 3 in the nation at the time.

 

“They let me shoot the t-shirt slinger,” he said with glee.

 

Tomasevicz wasn’t just a hero on campus; he was also an alumnus. At Nebraska, he majored in electrical engineering and walked onto the football team. Before the Olympics, his greatest athletic stage had been the 2002 Rose Bowl when the Cornhuskers lost to Miami. As a sophomore running back, though, Tomasevicz didn’t play. He said he didn’t expect to, but the Olympics were different. In Vancouver, he said, “I knew I was competing and my team’s success depended on me.”  

 

By Thursday, Tomasevicz was visiting New York City for the first time, reading part of the Top 10 list on David Letterman, learning backstage that the team was on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Olympic photo issue, meeting Tom Hanks, and sitting at center ice during a NY Rangers game. 

 

As he pulled out his gold medal, he confided, “It still hasn’t hit me what this is. I don’t know what I expected about how to feel, but this isn’t it.”

 

Mesler also said it felt strange to be standing at the pinnacle of his sport after being an athlete all his life. In high school, he said, “When I won the national indoor track championship in pentathlon, I wanted to do it in college. At Florida, my track career was a disappointment and I got into bobsled. We won our first bob race, but it wasn’t the end. We won the world championships, but it wasn’t the ultimate goal. There had always something bigger to strive for. Now, for the first time in my life, I have what I’ve strived for,” he said.  “I don’t know how to deal with that.”

 

Tomasevicz, 29, and Mesler, 30, will have time to cope later. For now, the whirlwind continues. Tomasevicz has signed with a public speaking company and plans to speak at 32 Nebraska schools over 10 days in April. Mesler is working with his younger sister, Leigh, on a project that will expand personal interaction between school children and Olympians beyond the Games.

 

Bobsled training won’t resume until May (at the earliest) and Mesler said juggling the extracurricular activities is nothing compared to what they do in the gym. “If we’re not on a bobsled track, we’re on vacation,” he said.

 

Tags: Curt Tomasevicz, Nike, Steve Holcomb, Steve Mesler, Steven Holcomb, Team USA, TeamUSA.org, USA Bobsled