More News

 Gaithersburg fitness trainer Mike Kohn is back in the driver's seat.

He will guide a 650-pound bobsled and his teammates down an icy course that is approximately 4,921-feet long.

The fastest time gets gold.

Kohn, 37, co-owner of Philbin's Family Fitness and Athletic Training Center, learned three weeks ago that he would represent the United States in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Chantilly resident has been there before, winning a bronze medal in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City.

"I'm a little old, but I feel pretty good," Kohn said Thursday from Park City, Utah, where he practiced with teammates before heading to Vancouver.

"I've been to one Olympics to win a medal and, hopefully, we can do it again. We're going to put our best foot forward on this one."

Kohn will drive Team USA-3 in the two-man and the four-man bobsled competitions. He spends part of his year training with 1984 Olympic bobsledder and All-American decathlete John Philbin, 53, of Damascus, at Philbin's gym. Philbin was the head coach of the U.S. bobsled at the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France.

Joining him in his four-man sled on Feb. 26 are Bill Schuffenhauer, 36, of Ogden, Utah; Jamie Moriarty, 29, of Winnetka, Ill., and Nick Cunningham, 24, of Monterey, Calif. As of Thursday, it was unclear who would join Kohn as "pusher" in the Feb. 20-21 two-man race.

Kohn and nine professional U.S. bobsledders going to the 2010 Olympics train on speed, strength and power from March through September. Kohn trains at Philbin's, where he is director of strength and conditioning. In early fall, the athletes travel from their hometowns to training camps for bobsled-specific training. By the end of September, they are sliding down the track at Lake Placid, N.Y. October starts World Cup competitions and events continue through January across Europe.

"This is kind of out of the blue," said Kohn, an Olympic hopeful since he was in his late teens. "I've been around in sports enough to know — and life — that anything could happen and that you should never give up in what you're trying to accomplish."

Kohn has spent 20 years and more than $500,000 pursuing his sport. He was an alternate pusher in the 2006 Olympics and deemed a long shot to qualify for the 2010 Olympics.

Then his friend, Todd Hays, 40, of Texas, favored to be the team's driver, suffered a brain injury during a December crash while training in Germany and had to retired from the sport. Kohn's four-man sled finished sixth in a Jan. 17 World Cup event in Switzerland, qualifying the team for the Winter Games.

Kohn was 18 when he caught Philbin's eye in 1992. The 6-foot-1, 215-pound athlete played football and track at Chantilly High School. Philbin recruited him as a bobsledder.

"Speed is a very important element," Philbin said. "Brawn. You have to have a powerful build because it's a 650-pound sled that you push from a dead stop."

Bobsledders run nearly half of a football field in less than five seconds, then jump into a moving sled, Kohn said. Relaxing is the sled driver's main challenge, he said. Bobsledders walk the track daily and memorize the sharp turns, which come nearly every 15 feet.

Bobsledders are thrill seekers, Philbin said.

"You have to have that in your blood because when you go down it's like being in a washing machine," he said. "You're going 85 to 90 miles per hour on ice and you're hitting three and four G's while you're taking some of the turns."

G-force is the measure of an object's acceleration relative to gravity.

"The rider can't see anything. They have to feel the track," Philbin said. "They have to know where they are at all times with their eyes closed."

Kohn laughed and said every bobsledder has his own analogy.

"It's not like riding in the back of a Lincoln Town Car, I can tell you that much."

The 2010 Winter Games begin Friday and run until Feb. 28, televised on NBC. The men's two-man bobsled race starts at 8 p.m. Feb. 20 and continues at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 21. The men's four-man bobsled race starts at 4 p.m. Feb. 26 and continues the following day at 4 p.m. Feb. 27.