Bobsledding Attracts All the Big Names

Herschel Walker’s bobsled career is doing infinitely better than his football career, although I understand that we might soon be trading Herschel for nine sledders from Finland.

If Willie Gault had made the Olympic bobsled team--he failed to do so Sunday--his bobsled career could have become an alternative to his football career, seeing as how Willie caught something like one pass per game for the Raiders last season.

And Edwin Moses intended to get his bobsled career a-bobbin’, at least until recently deciding to save his strength for one more run at the hurdles in the next Summer Olympics.

With the Winter Olympics around the hill, some of America’s greatest athletes suddenly appear to have developed an irresistible urge to turn themselves into human popsicles and go hurtling down a chute of ice at high speed in what some of us still mistakenly call toboggans, although the truth is, toboggans are luges.

I haven’t seen this much obsession with sleds since Agnes Moorehead bought Rosebud for little Orson Welles.

What is this sudden love affair our super-jocks are having with the bobsled? Why was it so important to Walker to make the U.S. Olympic team, as he did Saturday? Why was Gault still out there trying to qualify, as he was Sunday?

I could understand Moses’ motivation. He knows that few Olympians have ever successfully, well, diversified.

The only person ever to have won a gold medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympics was a man named Eddie Eagan, who had a full life. He went to Yale, Harvard and Oxford, won the Olympic light-heavyweight boxing in 1920, won again in four-man bobsled in 1932, became a lawyer and married a millionaire.

Well, it takes all kinds. Of the other three guys in Eagan’s winning bobsled, one (Jay O’Brien) was 48 years old, another (Tippy Gray) was a prominent 40-year-old songwriter (“If You Were the Only Girl in the World”) and the other (Billy Fiske) had competed in the previous Olympics--at age 16.

But that was 60 years ago.

What could have happened in recent years to persuade already distinguished physical specimens such as Walker, Gault and Moses that their next goal in life should be bobsledding? I mean, do you think any of these three guys ever dreamed about this as kids?

Personally, I think two things happened.

One was the Jamaican bobsled team. At Calgary, these four guys got a lot of publicity. They were the ones who went “hobbin’ and a bobbin’.” They made sledding look appealing. And, they reminded you that you didn’t have to have Scandinavian bloodlines. The Jamaicans might not have won, but they sure did have fun, even appearing in a commercial for lo-cal beer.

The other reason? Easy.

Bo Jackson.

Bo provided a constant reminder that nothing was impossible, that an athlete could branch out, that he could “push the envelope,” as Chuck Yeager might say, go farther or faster than he ever imagined possible. Even when joking in his advertisements, Jackson’s subliminal message was that athletes could become jockeys, auto racers, surfers, polo players, golfers, goalies, whatever.

So, three cheers for Walker, Gault, Moses and the rest.

And I do mean the rest.

Because now that these three gentlemen have shown the way, I foresee dozens of other famous Americans bidding for bobsled berths on our 1994 U.S. team in Norway, including:

--Wilt Chamberlain, who already has made 20,000 bobsled runs and doesn’t care who knows it.

--Wayne Gretzky, who had better get out of hockey if he wantsto be a winner again in something.

--Jackie Joyner Kersee, who should immediately do something to protest bobsledding’s shameful discrimination against women.

--Refrigerator Perry, who is well-built to push a sled, well-built to be a sled and well-named for winter sports.

--Manute Bol, strictly because people would pay big money to see it.

--Jose Canseco, because speeding is his specialty.

--Joe DiMaggio, because he would be waiting for everybody at the finish line with some hot coffee.

--Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, because you have seen them drive.

--Evel Knievel, because he would take off in Oslo and land in Amsterdam.

--John Sununu, because he would be able to borrow the U.S. sled to run personal errands.

--And, of course, Leon Spinks, because some people go to races simply to see the accidents.