By Jill Adler

Everything shook as I crawled out of the cockpit. “Breathe, Jill” I told myself. “It’s over.” I could relax now that I had rattled to a stop in one piece. This was my first run on the Olympic bobsled track in Park City. I had three more coming yet after surviving the first, I thought, “Ok, I did it. I can go home now.” Something about quitting while you’re ahead came to mind. Perhaps I wouldn’t have felt this way had Coach Stephan Bosch not previously walked the track with me, pointing out places where, if I didn’t act appropriately (i.e. kept the sled from climbing too high on the track), I would ­ quote- flip and die. Was this just his German sense humor? The 30-year-old has driven his 4-man Team Bosch to five gold medals in America’s Cup Races just eight years after moving his family to the U.S. He knows a thing or two about bobsled tracks but maybe he just meant to say I’d fly off the track. The death thing was a figure of speech? Anyway, it was a terrifying motivator.

From the Junior Start, the Oly Park attendants released me. “Are you sure you want to ride with me?” I turned back and asked Jeremy , my ‘brakeman’ (one of the Park employees). He nodded; it’s part of the job. I locked down my helmet shield, white-knuckled the D-rings (my steering devices that might have resembled some Top Gun pilot mechanism had I not felt like I was riding in a fiberglass soapbox car), and gave a ready nod. There was the electronic board with 00:00:00:00 set to time me and a loudspeaker announcing my name as the driver on track. Gulp. Not only would I die but everyone would know it was me. The employees gave us a shove and we rounded slowly to curve 6. “Stay on the bottom and just get a feel for the sled,” I heard Stephan’s voice in my head. “Turn 7 is short and you won’t have much speed so stay relaxed and steer out of it (meaning align the sled with the center of the track; don’t be too high or too low). Turn 8, 9, 10 get more interesting. You’ll enter curve 11 at about 45 mph. Steer into the entrance with your left hand to make sure you don’t bob up or down. Stay in the middle.” The instructions played over in my head and I barely had time to exercise them before I was through each curve. I could feel the track fly by, was that curve 9 or 10? The rattling of the sled increased and my arms tensed as my grip tightened. Would I pass out? He said 2Gs of force. That’s what I would feel. My breath echoed in the helmet in time with my heartpound. All I could think about were those damn instructions. What’s my time? Am I centered? How fast am I going? Those questions occurred to me much later.

The last three curves were coming. As you enter one, the sled has a tendency to want to drift up toward the edge. You gently tug at the ‘inside’ D-ring to nose it down. The rougher your moves, the rougher the ride and slower the time- if you even make it to the end I suppose, according to Bosch.

Curve 14. Almost there. Steer into the entrance, hold the pressure for a second, let go, then steer again at the expansion bar on the track and let go. Was that the expansion mark? 15. Quick right-hand tug at the entrance, let go. Wait, wait, then at the exit steer out of the curve and slide into the finish. Ahhhhh. Over in about 45 seconds.

Bosch greeted me with the seriousness of a professional coach. Am I off the team? But I made it through without dying! You bobbed a bunch he taunted. The point is to be smooth in the face of rock solid, slick ice and G-forces. I wasn’t? It felt like I was. Bosch watches from the tower and coaches each driver at the school. You get a real live training camp which is quite a bit different than a one-time bobsled ride on the Comet. The UOP offers those throughout the year.

You sign up for the Stephan Bosch driving school, however, and you get an hour of classroom instruction that includes a history of the sport and some entertaining video of early attempts at bobsledding and scenes from the 2002 Olympics events at the Park; you walk the track with spikes on your shoes, noting critical spots to steer down or up, take two runs then break for dinner, take two more runs and a team photo at the finish dock and call it a day.*

I have ridden the Comet from the top start shack both in the winter and the summer and as excited as I was to try to drive my own, I was also wary of the pain. As a Comet passenger pulling something like 5Gs, let’s just say that you feel like you’ve been mugged when it’s over. That isn’t the case at all with the camp. In fact, after the initial run, I couldn’t wait to get back up to the start and go again. Let’s see: for $200 you can get beat up in one swift ride or for $300 more you could spend all day earning the adrenaline rush of a lifetime. Hmmmm.

Run four. My last so make it count. Determined to best my time and have a perfect run, I nodded ‘ready.’ They shoved me off and for a moment I had the feel of a professional driver. Confident, anticipatory, strong. This was my track. As I rounded each turn I thought the timing and steering would now become automatic. Ok, so I’m kidding but I could dream. I rounded curve 15 and wobbled to the finish. The time was better but not the best, Coach. For a moment, I was the athlete on an Olympic run. As much as I couldn’t wait to get home and tell everyone I knew what I had just experienced, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to race back up for one more run. I may never do this again but I’m psyched to have lived in the driver’s seat for just that afternoon.

Dates for this year’s Stephan Bosch Bobsled Driving School are Saturday, March 15 & Saturday, March 22, 2008. Call 435.658.4206 for reservations. Must be 18 Years and older in good general health. Each slider guaranteed four runs a piece (two as the pilot, two as the brakeman).

*classes for 2008 begin in the morning and include lunch rather than dinner after your runs.