New bobsleigh event draws more women

YANQING • Monobob, the do-it-yourself sliding sport that features one female bobsleigher pushing and piloting her own sledge, made its Olympic debut yesterday as part of a bid to increase the sport's diversity.

Its inclusion was intended to bolster the number of female athletes who can compete in the bobsleigh events at Beijing 2022, which now stands at 124 for men and 46 for women.

There are also lower barriers to entry, with monobobs all identical in design and costing about €40,000 (S$61,000), much less than the €75,000 and upwards for a two-person bobsleigh - a prohibitive cost for those seeking to participate.

Fourteen of the 20 competitors in the monobob are also racing in the two-woman event, in part because the event's quota system gives extra points to participants in the other discipline.

One of seven new events at the Beijing Games and the only one exclusively for women, drivers push a 130kg sleigh as fast as they can before jumping in and barrelling down an ice track at speeds up to 120kmh.

Kaillie Humphries of the United States led at the halfway mark of the first Olympic monobob event in Yanqing, with the two-time gold medallist opening up a yawning 1.04sec gap to Canada's Christine de Bruin. Germany's Laura Nolte was 1.22sec behind the leader in third spot, still in with a chance of making it seven sliding golds out of seven for her country.

Humphries will enter today's final two heats with the chance to become the first Winter Olympian to collect a gold medal for two countries.

She became an American citizen in December following a lengthy and acrimonious split with Bobsleigh Canada, which she represented at the past three Olympics and won two titles as part of the two-woman bobsleigh teams at the 2010 Vancouver and 2014 Sochi Games.

But despite her substantial lead, Humphries will take nothing for granted as monobob is a different and relatively new discipline.

"I'm just pretending like today didn't exist and having a fresh race tomorrow. Easier said than done, I can promise you that, but at the end of the day, I've had practice at doing it, and I've won and I've lost in this position," she said.

The lack of a partner makes it difficult to control the sleigh, admitted Jamaica's Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian, while the big dip in temperature added to the difficulties.

Drivers yesterday had to adapt to a much colder track at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre, with temperatures dropping to -7 deg C compared with positive numbers in the days before.

"Monobob is probably the most difficult sliding event. The sleigh weighs almost as much as a two-person sleigh, but you have one person that has to push it, has to navigate driving down," Fenlator-Victorian said.

"By not having that weight and mass, it feels like it's a Porsche that's sliding on ice, hydroplaning, and you have to have a lot of finesse. You can't do too much, you can't do too little, it doesn't respond the same, and everyone in this field is learning this sport at the same time."

On the debut of monobob, Fenlator-Victorian felt it was a start but more had to be done to encourage non-temperate countries to participate in bobsleigh.

"I think the intention is there but the execution has failed, the system has failed us as athletes... we really need to take a step back and think about what the objective is," she said.

Ghana's Akwasi Frimpong and Nigeria's Simidele Adeagbo competed at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games thanks to the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation's continental quota system. But it was axed ahead of Beijing 2022, leaving the sliding sports with no African representation.

"Sadly, it becomes that if you have money and you live in a certain area, you reap the benefits, and of course that is always going to happen, but how can we level a playing field enough so that people can at least try the sport," Fenlator-Victorian added.

NYTIMES, REUTERS