LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Veteran sprinter Tyson Gay is making a bid to force his way onto the US bobsleigh team after entering this week's National Push Championships in Canada.

The 34-year-old, a polarising figure in track and field after his 2013 doping conviction, joins Ryan Bailey as another former Olympic sprinter hoping to switch sports.

Push championships are compulsory for any athlete aiming to make the US national team during the 2016-17 season, a key part of preparations for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

The championships get under way on Wednesday in Calgary, Alberta.

Both Gay and Bailey were members of the US 4x100m relay squad who won the silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

The team was later stripped of the silver after evidence of Gay's doping emerged.

He competed in last month's Rio de Janeiro Olympics as a member of the US 4x100m relay squad, who were disqualified in the final after finishing third behind Jamaica and Japan.

In 2014 in Sochi, Lauryn Williams became just the third woman to win a medal in both the Summer and Winter Games, when she helped steer the US to second place in the women's bobsleigh.

She was the silver medallist in the 100m at Athens 2004 and world champion in the event in Helsinki the following year.