DAEGWALLYEONG, South Korea — Justin Olsen, the American bobsled pilot, watched on a television screen as the Canadian sled, the final entrant in the two-man bobsled race Monday night, barreled into final turns, toward the bottom of the rack.
Olsen was standing in the mixed zone, the maze of barriers at the base of the track, just past the finish line, where reporters and athletes mingle. He had finished well back, but he happened to be watching the run that would decide the competition. Canada’s sled, driver Justin Kripps and push man Alex Kopacz, had started the last run with a gold medal in sight, needing a run of 3:16.86 to keep pace with the German sled of Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis.
On the screen, as the Canadian sled stormed around a turn, the differential clock flipped from green to red — Kripps and Kopacz were one hundredth of a second ahead of the German pace.
“He’s gonna get it,” Olsen said.
But then, coming around Turn 13, Kripps steered into a slight skid, an imperceptible nudge against a side wall. It didn’t look like much — except to Olsen.
“Nope,” Olsen said. “Not anymore. That bobble.”
In the next turn, Canada had picked up speed. It was going to be close, for sure.
“Maybe,” Olsen said. “If he does it, it’s going to be by a one-hundredth.”
The Canadians crossed the line. The pace clock did not turn to red. Nor did it stay green. It turned white. The differential was 0:00:00. It was a tie, a dead heat after four trips, 3.1 miles of racing careening down an icy, winding hill. Two gold medals would be awarded, plus one bronze, to the Latvian sled, which in another testament to the margins of bobsled had finished four runs in 3:16.91.
On the track, it was mayhem. Nobody had any mixed feelings about a dual gold. Canadians hugged each other. Germans hugged each other. Germans hugged Canadians. The fans of both countries erupted.
For Kripps and Kopacz, it was a mix of elation and confusion. When Kripps crossed the finish line, he had seen, for a flash, the scoreboard put up ‘1.’ He knew they had won, but that was all he knew. “There’s no symbol for tie in bobsled,” Kripps said. When the sled came to a stop, coaches and teammates swarmed the sled.
“I saw the Germans, too,” Kripps said. “I was like, ‘That’s nice; they’re really excited that we won.’ We’re all good friends.”
After Kripps got out of he sled and teammates had embraced and high-fived him, Margis, the German pusher, hugged Kripps.
“He was like, ‘It was three hundredths, and then two, and then we tied,'” Kripps said. “I was like, ‘We tied?’ He was like, ‘Yeah!’ It’s amazing.”
Kopacz still didn’t realize the Germans had won. For several minutes, he believed Canada had claimed the only gold. Then the sliders all convened in the change room.
“I asked the German guys again,” Kopacz said. “I said, ‘I’m not understanding. Did we win?’ They’re like, ‘Well, yeah. But we tied.’ It’s pretty insane. What are the odds?”
Not actually that long. The differences in bobsled are so thin that ties, while rare, do happen. The last gold medal tie in bobsled came in 1998, when Pierre Lueders piloted Canada to a gold-medal tie with Italy. Lueders drove with Kripps as his brakeman in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He was there Monday night: He is now the coach of South Korea’s bobsled team.
Olsen immediately predicted bobsled would move to a clock with thousandths of a second. Luge has already made the switch — incredibly, races are even tighter in luge. There are good reasons to stick with the current system. If two sleds come with less than a hundredths of each other, should that really separate them? Still, bobsled changing to thousandths felt inevitable to some.
“We have a lot of ties,” Canadian Christopher Spring said. “Like, a lot of ties. Not just today. For me, it doesn’t matter. But, yeah, if you want to see who actually beat who, then sure, let’s go to the thousandths. But hey, we could still have ties then as well. Where do you stop?”
“I think it needs to now,” Canadian slider Jesse Lumsden said. “You don’t see a ton of ties, but, shoot, I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”
One worthy reason could be seen Monday night, when four men stood on top of a podium instead of two, and two national anthems were played, and joy was doubled. Sharing a victory had not reduced the achievement, but somehow enhanced it.
“It was actually a really special moment,” Kripps said. “It’s two other guys that are as happy as you are. You just became Olympic champions. The bobsled community is really tight-knit. We’ve been friends and rivals with these guys for years. They’ve had a lot of success, and we’re starting to as well. They’re genuinely happy for us, and we’re happy for them, too.”
