The season may be over, but for one Barrhead based athlete, the work is just about to begin.
On March 3, Melissa Lotholz made her way back home after spending the better part of four months with the Canadian National Bobsleigh Team as part of two-time Olympic gold medalist Kaillie Humphries’ two-person sled.
“We had a pretty good season and for me personally, it was an amazing experience,” Lotholz said, adding it’s something she hopes to do again next season.
During the 2014/2015 World Cup Bobsleigh season, team Humphries finished in second place behind their number one rivals, the Elana Meyers led United States team.
However, before she starts to prepare for next year’s season, Lotholz will take a much deserved break to rest and reflect on the past season before getting back to training seriously sometime in April.
It was during this break that Lotholz stopped by the Leader office to update its readers on her progress over the past season.
When the Barrhead Leader last spoke to Lotholz for a story in the Jan. 27 issue, she was in a hotel room in Konigssee, Germany, a day after team Humphries finished in fifth in a World Cup race in the same city. The race was just one of the two races Lotholz didn’t compete in.
After the race in Konigssee, the Canadian Bobsleigh team moved on to a race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
The track in St. Moritz is a little bit different than all the other bobsleigh tracks on the World Cup circuit, in that it is the only natural track.
“It really is cool. St. Moritz is the birthplace of bobsleigh and they actually carve the track out of the ice,” she said, adding that World Cup organizers had to move the race date because it was too warm earlier in the season to build the track.
Because it is a natural track, Lotholz said it can prove to be a little bit tricky to gauge the track conditions.
Like all tracks, the course in St. Moritz is dependent on temperature. Basically the colder the temperature, the harder ice is. As a general rule, natural ice is colder and harder than artificial ice. Because the ice is harder the blades on the bobsleigh don’t have as much resistance, allowing the sleds to travel at a higher speed and lowering overall times.
Although Lotholz said, teams love the quickness of the St. Moritz track, it also poses a couple of unique challenges for teams.
“Blade selection is critical in St. Mortiz,” she said. “The weather during training and race day was just about perfect, hovering just a little below 0 degrees Celsius, so we chose to use really quick blades.”
Unfortunately, she said the blades the Canadian team decided on were too quick, causing the sled to skid on top of the ice and slide too wide around the corners, thus losing critical time.
“On most tracks, the times get slower the more sleds go down the track, but in St. Moritz it’s the exact opposite,” she said, adding the team received a draw in the middle of the pack.
The Humphries team finished the race outside the podium in seventh place.
“It was a really disappointing finish for us. We were really starting to get a lot of momentum on our push starts,” Lotholz said, adding that in St. Moritz they had one of their better starts of the season.
After St. Moritz, the team packed up and headed for the next race in La Plagne, France.
Even though it is Lotholz’s first year on the team, it was the second time she visited the city. Earlier in the season she travelled to La Plagne with Humphries in her attempt to qualify as a driver for the four-person mixed team.
Last year, bobsleigh’s international governing body decided to open up the four-person event to both sexes. Humphries is one of two female drivers in the world who have qualified to compete in both the two-person women’s and the four-person mixed events.
“It was kind of cool,” she said. “I knew where everything was and what the track was like.”
In La Plagne the Humphries team used their experience on the track to their advantage, finishing on the podium in third place.
“It was really refreshing to be back on the podium,” Lotholz said. “It was a confirmation that we were on the right track. There was a lot of things that we were doing right, but we weren’t necessarily getting the results.”
La Plagne also gave Lotholz a chance to have some extra time off due to losing a training day because of a technical problem at the track. While teams are on the road the regular schedule is to train Tuesday through Thursday, while Friday and the weekends are usually competition days. Monday is the day teams usually travel to the next venue.
She said most of the tracks are in small mountain communities, similar to Jasper, though not as touristy, but La Plagne is different.
“It’s a definitely a ski town and I spent a day with the Belgian girls and went to the ski hill and we watched people ski from the bottom of the hill,” Lotholz said.
After La Plagne, Team Canada once again packed everything up and moved on to Igls, Austria.
To get to Austria from France, the team had to cut through Italy.
“Travelling in Europe is really different,” she said. “Because everyone is part of the European Union there are no real borders to delay anyone.”
Once again, in Igls, Team Humphries had a disappointing result, this time finishing in sixth place, even though the team felt good and had a very good push start.
“Sometimes you can look at a performance and not really see where you made the mistake. At the top of the course we were 200th of a second off, and while that doesn’t sound like much, in bobsleigh it can make a big difference,” Lotholz said, adding that time lost at the top of the course multiplies by three by the time the sled reaches the bottom.
After Igls, Team Canada packed their bags for the final World Cup race and the second last race of the season in Sochi, Rusia.
“It was really funny,” she said. “Usually all the teams travel separately, but because this trip was longer and everyone had to fly, we travelled as one big group on the same flight. The teams even stayed at the same motel.”
Just like after St. Moritz, Team Humphries, responded to their disappointing result with one of their best performances of the season.
After the first run of the day, the Humphries sled was in third place behind the Americans and the Belgians, but after their second run, the team was able to move into second place.
Besides their success, Lotholz said she remembers the day so well because it was Valentine’s Day.
“Both Kaillie and I joked that we both received flowers on Valentine’s Day at the flower and medal ceremony,” she said, adding that after the race the team was also presented with their second place World Cup trophies.
However, even though the World Cup season was over, Team Canada still had one more race – the World Championships in Winterburg, Germany.
Lotholz compares the World Cup circuit to being similar to competing for the Stanley Cup in hockey, while the World Championships are like the Olympics.
Unfortunately, Team Humphries didn’t have the result they were hoping for, finishing the competition tied for seventh place.
Lotholz said Humphries health may have played a factor in their substandard showing. Just before the competition Humphries picked up a bad cold, so she wasn’t at the top of her game, and missed training sessions.
Complicating the matter is that as amateur athletes, Humphries was limited to the type of remedies she could take because many over the counter medicines contain drugs that are forbidden by the International Olympic Committee.
“We have to be very careful what we take. It didn’t help that we were in Germany and we couldn’t read the labels,” Lotholz said.
As for what is next for Lotholz, she plans to take it easy and work on looking for sponsorships. Sometime in April the Bobsleigh Canada coaches will talk to all the athletes and do a debrief and give her a training regiment for the off season.
