Home-Ice Advantage - by Curt Tomasevicz

There are many times when you hear an athlete talk about the home field advantage. Theoretically, there should be no such thing. All the athletes or teams have to compete on the same field with the same dimensions, in the same weather, at the same time. But for some unexplainable reason, the home team usually has some mysterious advantage over their opponent. The same can be said for bobsledding.

Typically, a team has a home track advantage over all the other teams simply because the team has taken more practice runs throughout the course of the season. And because every bobsled track in the world is different, each track requires a certain set of driving skills to be mastered. Our home track advantage would be in Lake Placid, NY or in Park City, Utah (USA’s only bobsled tracks).

In addition to the extra practice runs a home team has on their track, there is a “comfort” advantage that a team can have. For example, because most of the tracks on the World Cup circuit are in Europe, we have to spend eight-weeks straight on the other side of the Atlantic. That being said, there are a number of things that could put an American out of their “comfort zone” as they compete. But I am going to refuse to dwell on those small discomforts. In this blog, I want to talk about some of the great things that competing in Europe allows us to do.

The first great thing about spending so much time in Europe is that we have to travel from one World Cup stop to the next by automobile. We haul our sleds in the back of large cargo vans. The thrill of driving in Europe can be summed up in one word… "Autobahn!”. Of course the Autobahn Highway System is set up very similar to the Eisenhower Interstate System in the United States with one major difference - no speed limits. That’s right, for much of every highway, you can travel as fast as you feel is reasonable…and faster. During our eight-hour drive from Winterberg, Germany to St. Moritz, Switzerland yesterday, we found out that our Land Rover’s governor was set at 195 kilometers per hour (120 mph). At one time I think I had my foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor for about twelve minutes straight.

Another great thing about spending time in Europe is the chocolate. You might raise your eyebrows at this one and question if I’m serious or not. Really, Curt? This is something that must be experienced. I don’t know how I’ll be able to explain how simple milk chocolate tastes better in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. But it’s true. Of course I have to maintain a certain weight and I want to be in top physical form to be able to compete, so I must restrain myself from eating the all the chocolate that I desire.

Maybe my favorite European tradition is Siesta. This beloved practice takes place mostly in Italy. The Italians, realizing that an eight-hour work day is just ridiculously too long, go home in the middle of the day for a two- or three-hour nap. Everything shuts down. You can’t go to the bank, the grocery store, or even find a receptionist at the hotel. We even got scolded a couple years ago for lifting weights in the hotel garage and being too noisy at 3:30 in the afternoon. At that moment we learned if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So we became accustomed to taking a little snooze every afternoon while we competed in Italy.

Ok, so maybe the thrill of driving on the autobahn while eating chocolate just after a good siesta isn’t going to improve my team’s chances of winning a bobsled race, but it sure does make eight weeks overseas bearable enough to discount the European’s comfort of a home – ice advantage.