Bobsled Standing in 2010 Olympics

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It was an unlikely path that took Whelen Engineering from the worlds of auto racing and fishing into the sport of bobsledding.

For many years, Whelen Engineering has been involved with speed and competition. The company continues a partnership with NASCAR as the title sponsor of the Modified and Southern Modified Tours as well as the All-American Series.

And initially, Whelen provided donations to the Geoff Bodine Celebrity Fishing Tournament in Florida.

But bobsledding?

"Whelen became an Associate Sponsor on Geoff Bodine's number 7 QVC Winston Cup (now Sprint Cup) race car after I approached Geoff to see what it would cost,” said Whelen Engineering Vice President Phil Kurze. “I used my relationship with John Morgan, my fraternity brother at Central Connecticut State University, to open the conversation with Geoff, indicating that we had something in common.”

Auto racing and bobsledding first met in 1992 under inauspicious circumstances. The NASCAR great and winner of the 1986 Daytona 500 as well as 18 NASCAR Cup Series events, Bodine had settled into his living room to watch the Olympic bobsled races from Albertville, France.

What he saw was startling. American athletes, some of the best in the world including football star Herschel Walker, finished well behind the Europeans. One of the main reasons was equipment and technology. The United States had no sled-maker, which relegated American athletes to purchasing gear from European teams. Certainly if a sled from say, Germany, was fast, why would the Germans sell it? The fact of the matter was simple: the U.S. was buying cast-offs and their results showed it. Bodine had seen enough.

Later that year, the race car driver came to Lake Placid, N.Y., where one of four North American tracks is located and got the bobsled experience. And an earful. Bodine collaborated with Bob Cuneo of Chassis Dynamics, with whom he had a car racing relationship. It was the genesis of the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project, Inc., and the beginning of the big bobsled turn-around.

Success in the Bo-Dyn sleds did not occur overnight. With only Bodine’s money propping the sled initiative, results were slow to come, but there was progress.

“With the association with Geoff we learned about his goals and aspirations for the USA Bobsled Teams and we felt it was a very worthy cause,” continued Kurze. “Whelen believes in products made in America and Geoff's dedication to the proposition that American athletes should be using American-made equipment coincided with our corporate philosophy.”

Over the past 10 years, Whelen Engineering has been the financial backbone of the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project, Inc. with contributions growing substantially when the organization became Connnecticut-based.

Whelen ramped up their cross-promotional support by displaying the corporate logo on the lower rear quarter panel of the number 31 Marsh Racing NASCAR Busch North and Busch Series race cars. Monetary contributions continued and grew as the years went on, realizing that research and development were critical to the success of the Project.

Using home ice to their advantage at the 2002 Winter Games in Utah, the U.S. men and women teamed for three medals, one of each color, in their Bo-Dyn craft, with pilots Jill Bakken, Todd Hays and Brian Shimer, respectively.

In 2005, Bodine teamed with Morgan, the former bobsledder, creative sports promoter and current bobsled voice on NBC, to create the Geoff Bodine Bobsled Challenge. The event, in which stars from NASCAR and NHRA come to Lake Placid and race each other in modified sleds, would be a means of raising awareness and needed funding to build Made-in-America bobsleds for the United States teams.

That patriotic theme resonated with Whelen Engineering because the organization signed on as the sponsor of the first Bodine Challenge in January 2006. It started the five-year plan to re-double the effort to synch bobsledding with auto racing and bring the elements of successful competition from asphalt to the ice.

Has it worked? Driver Shauna Rohbock delivered a women’s silver medal at the Torino Winter Games in 2006. However in the spring of that year, the U.S. Olympic Committee took over operation of the financially-strapped national team. In the off-season, after a successful Bodine Challenge in Lake Placid, Bo-Dyn approached Whelen Engineering and the Chester, Conn., company agreed to assist with the sled evolution.

Funding from Whelen Engineering enabled Cuneo to re-do the fleet of nine sleds, and experiment with a new steering concept in several of them. Performances improved quickly in 2006-07. Steve Holcomb, who had never won a medal in his career, captured six gold en route to taking the World Cup two-man overall crown, the combined two and four man World Cup driving championship, and finished second in the four-man standings.

Rohbock capitalized, too, winning multiple World Cup races and was second in the season rankings.

With the spring of 2007 came better news for the Bo-Dyn Project and U.S. athletes. Whelen Engineering President John Olson not only agreed to continue his firm’s support of American bobsledding, but he upped the ante by giving Cuneo an additional $100,000 to build a new sled. This one, the now-famous Night Train, ultimately became a World Champion.

In that off-season of 2007, a group from Whelen, Bo-Dyn and the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation flew to Colorado Springs for meetings with the U.S. Olympic Committee, now running the national team. This gathering set the stage for a three-year agreement between Bo-Dyn and the USOC.

That additional $100,000 investment bore fruit in the midst of this deal when Holcomb drove the sleek, black Night Train to the 2009 four-man World Championship in Lake Placid. This was the USA’s first men’s world title in 50 years.

Holcomb continued that success in the 2009-10 World Cup season which ended just before the Vancouver events began. Holcomb won the World Cup four-man crystal on the strength of three straight tour wins and other consistent high performances.

Teammate John Napier won his first career World Cup event - in a two-man sled - and a total of three medals in eight competitions. Twice this season Holcomb and Napier shared space on the World Cup podium. They are chomping at the bit to arrive in western Canada and make a loud pronouncement on the sport’s biggest stage.

Mike Kohn became the USA’s third pilot at the Games, making the U.S. one of just three nations to qualify three drivers.

Bringing the focus closer to the Olympic Games, Erin Pac joined Rohbock on the podium last winter at the pre-Olympic World Cup race at the Whistler Sliding Center, north of Vancouver. They were supported by yet a third U.S. driver, Bree Schaaf, who finished sixth in that competition.

All of this success came in Bo-Dyn bobsleds - supported by Whelen Engineering - and sets the stage for greater achievements at Whistler in late February.

Holcomb’s Night Train is a legitimate medal contender in the four-man. Should he or his compatriots wind up with four great runs over two days, turn back the mighty Germans and Swiss and emerge with a gold medal, it would end a lengthy drought. American men have not captured an Olympic gold in 62 years.

The women, on the other hand, are looking to extend an Olympic medal-winning streak that dates back to 2002 when women’s bobsled - a two-person race - entered the Olympic program. If it just so happens that Schaaf is part of that accomplishment, it would be a marked change from the days when she rented sleds for over $500 per week.

Whelen Engineering is among the entities leading to this American success story, which has brought these athletes to the pinnacle of their sport.

After a stop at the fishing hole, the path to the bobsled track was not the one that offered the least resistance. But it may be the path that results in the most success.