Jesse Lumsden: From the CFL to the Olympics

you talked about crashing and, and like, what is that like? Like when that, when that sled goes over, like what, what is that like for you? I mean, you already said it was like riding down a washing machine off the edge of a cliff, but

yeah.

Yeah.

Crashing is, is, So there's two ways to crash.

You can crash into a corner and then you can crash out of into the entrance of a corner out of the exit of a corner.

Cause that's where the pressures are building.

And on this particular crash in Sochi, there's a chicane where it's kind of like two little bendaways.

And obviously you want to try to shoot the chicane and we just built too much pressure going into the ancient entrance.

And in a four man, when you have four guys that are, 102, 103 kilos each, you know, 220 to 230 pounds.

It's a lot of weight that sits pretty high in the sled.

You want that center of gravity low.

And we just went in with the nose too much pressure.

We shot the chicane, but then it just turned us in.

So it happens really quick.

And when you think back on it, you can remember like the split second of just pure quiet before it gets extremely loud.

And the whole thing about a crash is like stay in the sled, make yourself as small as possible in a format.

And that is very difficult because you're already packed into that thing like sardines can.

Uh, but then it's just holding on as tight as you can until the sled stops.

Uh, you hope somebody like track crew are there to sort of throw hooks into your sled because as you come down at the bottom of a bobsleigh track, the bottom, you know, I would say maybe depending on the track, you eventually start going uphill again.

Yeah.

So if you don't get caught, uh, on your crash you end up going backwards oh you don't want to do that because that's just you're prolonging the the discomfort and potential pain of like sliding on your head and shoulder and all that sort of jazz so you kind of you know the cool runnings like thank you dead man like everybody everybody does a quick check you know you holler out it's like you good you good you good yeah okay

i don't know if i am all right

just hang tight and you check each other out, we go see our medics, we go see our docs and hopefully get cleared to slide and, uh, go again.

It's crazy.

I can't even, I can't even imagine that,