A supreme evil robot. The Hawaiian god of ice and snow. Superman.
Olympic bobsledder and on-again-off-again Vancouverite Justin Kripps has raced sleds named for muscled symbols of power, authority and supernatural violence.
He’s raced in vehicles named Megatron and Poli’ahu. His current four-man sled is named Kal-El, which he inherited from the Canadian team that won bronze at the 2010 Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Olympics.
“That sled’s got a tonne of mojo,” said Kripps. “As soon as they got in that sled, they started winning medals.”
He’s keeping the name.
Kripps, 26, will take every advantage he can to return to the Winter Games, hosted in Sochi, Russia and set to start Feb. 7, 2014.
He raced on Pierre Lueders’ four-man team at the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Olympics (they finished fifth) and is now piloting his own two- and four-man teams on the World Cup, an eight-race international circuit that sends the best nations and teams to the Sochi Winter Games.
Kripps is the third Canadian sled on the World Cup. After three events, he’s ranked eighth in the four-man and 11th in the two-man. He must be in the top three of all No. 3 sleds to qualify for Sochi. Right now, his top 10 four-man ranking puts him ahead of them all.
If Kripps succeeds, it will be the first time Canada sends three men’s sleds to the Winter Games.
“Our hard work is starting to pay off but we have a lot more work to do to ensure we're not only on the start line in Sochi but a podium threat as well,” he said last week. The next World Cup event in Winterberg, Germany begins Jan. 3.
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Canadian boblsedders like Kripps are also charged with funding part of their season. Their advertisments are among the best:
The nations with the strongest No. 3 sleds include Germany, the U.S. and Russia, which are currently ranked 13th, 17th and 19th, respectively.
“With us being eighth, we are in the lead and need to stay ahead of at least one of those other sleds to qualify,” said Kripps. “I'm really happy with our current ranking.”
He pilots the team of Tim Randall, James McNaughton, both from Ontario, and Bryan Barnett from Calgary.
When he was part of Lueders’ crew at the 2010 Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Olympics, Kripps took a backseat to one of the sports’ best. It was Lueders who pushed Kripps into the pilot’s seat.
“I slid with him for three year and I learned pretty much every thing I know about the sport form him,” said Kripps, who was born in Hawaii and moved between there and Summerland, B.C. until he was a teenager and settled in Canada.
“I learned a lot when I was sliding with him… and then when he retied, he became my coach for my first two years. Getting to learn the fundamentals from somebody like that was super valuable. I think that’s the only reason I have a shot to go to Sochi as a driver is because I learned the basics from him.”
Learning the specifics of each track is the first strategic advantage one pilot can learn over another. Lueders taught Kripps these track secrets.
“He’s very precise and very specific and there are certain kinds of keys to every track you have to know. He taught me these on the tracks that we went to together, so now when I go back and race, I have that in my mind. At the very least, you have to do this properly in the race and then you’ll be pretty fast."
His first complete run as a pilot came in Lake Placid, immediately after the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Winter Games. As a driver, he’s since counted 700 runs, which he tracks each day on his iPhone. “Every 100 is a landmark,” he said.
Jokes about speeding bullets aside, Kripps felt very different about the sport when he braced for his first run as a pilot.
“It’s pretty intimidating, standing at the top of a track and knowing that you’re going to go a lot faster than you have before,” said Kripps, who reached his top speed of 151.8 km/h at the Whistler Sliding Centre.
“You know that you’re going fast and you have to convince yourself that you have what it takes to keep it straight and not flip over.”
Lueders won’t be in Sochi coaching Kripps or the other Canadian pilots, Chris Spring and Lyndon Rush. Earlier this year he took a coaching position with the national Russian team.
“I didn’t love it at first, obviously,” said Kripps. “He’s coaching my direct competition, but I felt confident of where he left me at in my career.”
The opportunity to compete with the home team was one the younger pilot could understand after the excitement Canadian athletes felt in 2010.
“I’m sure he wanted that kind of feeling again. I think it was probably the right decision for him, but I hope he comes back one day,” said Kripps.
The change from the back to the front seat has brought increased responsibilities and thrills. The technical challenges demand constant attention for problems he didn’t have to solve when he was the muscles pushing the sled or the brake slowing it down.
“When I was a brakeman, you don’t really look forward to sliding in training. You look forward to racing,” he said.
“But as a pilot, I have things to work on every single day and there’s no such thing as a perfect bobsleigh run. You can always improve something. That keeps me interested, keeps me excited to slide everyday.”
