The Savior

As veteran NASCAR owner-driver Geoff Bodine prepares for the Daytona 500, much of his heart--and wallet--will be riding with the U.S. bobsled team in the Winter Olympics.

Bodine has invested about $200,000--and helped raise much more--to provide the team with American engineered and built sleds. The hope is to end European domination and the embarrassing, decades-long pattern of U.S. sledders often using secondhand equipment borrowed or bought from the same Europeans who were always on the victory stand and who were always moving on to better and faster rides.

The Bo-Dyn sled--built in conjunction with engineer Bob Cuneo of Chassis Dynamics in Connecticut--made its debut on the World Cup circuit before the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, but referring to subsequent refinements, Bodine said, “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

Now, he said from his office in Harrisburg, N.C., “We could be selling them as fast as we make them. The Europeans would love to get their hands on our equipment, but it’s not going to happen. Our equipment is strictly for our guys and gals.”

Gals? Bobsledding is an all-male domain in the Olympics, but there is a U.S. women’s national team and Bodine said his next goal is to put it into the Games.

“My goal was to provide U.S. athletes with the best bobsleds in the world,” he said. “We’re close to that, but it may take an Olympic medal to prove what we’ve done.”

The U.S. has not won a bobsled medal since 1948.

Controversy, misdirection, poor financing and internal bickering have consistently undermined the effort.

In the four-man at Lillehammer, Brian Shimer’s top U.S. team didn’t even get on the ice. The support staff overheated the runners, resulting in disqualification.

In fact, the U.S. Bobsled Federation was so strapped when Bodine became involved in the early ‘90s that “without us,” he said, “the bobsled federation and bobsledding in general wouldn’t now exist in the U.S. They were in a lot of financial trouble. We’ve since raised and spent over $1.5 million on top of what the federation has spent. I’m proud of what we’ve done, but I don’t want a medal.

“Aside from helping the bobsledders, I would hope our involvement would motivate other people to get involved in what they like--ice skating, Make-a-Wish, Easter Seals. Plant a seed and it grows.

“Auto racing has been good to me. It’s allowed me to get involved and spend a lot of money. I hope we can spread a message.”

Bodine, 48, has won more than $10.5 million in 18 years on the Winston Cup stock car circuit.

He and Cuneo have now built and distributed 14 sleds to U.S. athletes without charge, also providing the Olympic team with a staff of mechanics to keep them gassed and lubed, so to speak.

It’s a dramatic change.

The first time Shimer, the driver of U.S. I and a four-time Olympian, had a sled of his own was 1991 when he bought a two-man sled from Swiss driver Nico Baracchi for $21,000.

A friend lent him the money, and his father took a second mortgage on his house to repay the friend.

In the summer before the ’94 Olympics, instead of joining teammates in weight work and training, Shimer pounded the pavement, raising money to pay off debts and organizing the Brian Shimer Bobsled Club to help generate funds.

Besides Shimer, the membership included a volunteer secretary and a seldom needed accountant.

A year earlier, drawing attention to his financial plight before the 1993 world championships, he put a piece of tape on his helmet and wrote on it, “Your Logo Here.”

Said Shimer, “If it wasn’t for the Bo-Dyns, there’s no telling what we’d be driving now.”

The Bo-Dyn program, lifting the load from the search for equipment and sponsorships, influenced Shimer to move full time to the training facility in Lake Placid, N.Y., last summer, working under bobsled coach Steve Maiorca. His fiancee, Russian-born ice dancer Sofia Eliazova, also trains in Lake Placid, and this may be his last crack at an Olympic medal, so Lake Placid was attractive from those standpoints as well, but the improved quality of the sleds played into his determination to reach top physical form and refine teamwork with his pushers and brakeman.

“It was a matter of becoming one with the sled,” he said. “We’re close to being dialed in now. If we get off the hill with a fast start, no one will beat us to the bottom.”

Said Bodine: “The guys had only a few months to work with the sleds before Lillehammer. We’ve since made changes in the aerodynamics and frame structure, but the whole effort is better now. It starts with bigger, stronger and better prepared athletes.”

The Bo-Dyns alone don’t translate to automatic success. The Europeans--along with Canadian Pierre Lueders--dominated the 1996-97 World Cup campaign, Lueders winning the two-man title.

The U.S. sledders, however, consider Nagano an even playing field, and Shimer won gold and silver medals in World Cup competition here last February.

Consistency, Shimer said, will be the key over the four runs of the Olympics. The unique Nagano course, known as the Spiral, contains two uphill sections and puts a premium on a precise line and driving skill.

Asked specifically about the red-hot Lueders, Shimer said, “He’s been king of the hill [this season], but I don’t think he drives that well.”

At 35, Shimer has passed all of the driving tests except the big one. This could be his final shot at an elusive medal. The former football player at Morehead State in Kentucky said he related his quest to that of quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino, never knowing if the next game would be the last in the bid for a Super Bowl ring.

In Elway’s year, maybe it will also be Shimer’s.

He keeps coming back, he said, because friends have told him to keep doing it while he can and because he still hears the beat.

“Until you march in the Olympics, you can’t describe the feeling,” he said. “My first time at Calgary [in 1988] there wasn’t enough snow for the opening ceremonies so they brought in white sand to make it look like snow.

“It’s tough to walk in sand, but you wouldn’t have found any on my boots because my feet didn’t touch the ground.”

No surprise that Shimer reacted emotionally to the international investigation that threatened his reputation. A November drug test showed an abnormal ratio between his testosterone and epitestosterone levels. He was ultimately cleared, but it was with tears and repeated pauses that he read a prepared statement the other day in which he said the two-month process caused him irreparable harm and embarrassment.

“I care what people think about me, so any controversy is a big distraction,” he said. “Time to toughen up. One more hurdle to overcome.”

Bodine would like to be here to see if Shimer can hurdle it, but he has that date in Daytona Feb. 15.

He’ll watch as much as he can on television, which is how his interest was kindled.

“I saw our guys struggle [in the ’92 Olympics],” he said. “I took my family to Lake Placid that winter and actually drove a bobsled, scaring myself to death. I mean, I bumped a wall, bent the frame and decided that I’d have to build a replacement.

“I didn’t know until then we were using secondhand and second-rate equipment that we were buying from our competitors. No wonder we couldn’t win. It was appalling. I mean, they had to worry about raising the money, finding the equipment, hope it would work. I’m a patriot guy. I couldn’t believe we weren’t using American equipment in the Olympics and decided to do something about it.”