What a Rush!
To television viewers, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics were a marvelous mix of emotions and athletic excellence, a fun-filled, two-week party of grand proportions.
To the competitors, including bobsleigh bronze medallist Lyndon Rush of Sylvan Lake, the Winter Games were all of that and more.
“The whole thing was pretty neat. It was a big show, a big event . . . a huge undertaking. It was really impressive,” Rush said on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after arriving home with his medal.
“I was anticipating something big, but until you’re there to experience it you don’t really know what to expect. It’s such a big show. There’s so much planning and so much going on. It was amazing.”
Rush piloted Canada 1 to a bronze medal-finish in the four-man bobsleigh event on Saturday, finishing a mere one-one-hundredth of a second behind the German sled driven by two-time Olympic champion Andre Lange of Germany and .39 seconds behind the winning crew from the United States.
The 29-year-old was at first disappointed with the result, then realized the magnitude of the accomplishment — the bronze is just the second Olympic medal ever won by Canada in the sport.
“We did a really good job. It was first and foremost a great race,” said Rush, who was accompanied down the Whistler Sliding Centre track by David Bissett of Edmonton, Lascelles Brown of Calgary and Chris Le Bihan of Grande Prairie. “We were really in a tight one and it’s enjoyable to be in that type of race, especially when you’re close to the front and you have a chance of winning or being right there.
“That’s what racers live for — those sort of events. It was a lot of fun.”
A week earlier, Rush, with Brown as his brakeman, overturned his sled during the second run of the two-man event and was eliminated from medal competition.
“Really, it was unbelievable when it happened, I’m still surprised that it happened,” said Rush, who was just one-tenth of a second out of first place at the time with the leading drivers still to go, and leading the fourth-place sled by a comfortable margin.
“It really sucked, but you can’t go into a race fearing a result, good or bad. I was ready for whatever happened and the unimaginable happened, but I was OK with it.”
The bronze-medal race was his final event of the year and Rush will eventually return to his day job as a real estate agent.
“But I have no plans for the next little while and that’s sort of on purpose,” he said.
Rush is uncertain about his future in the sport of bobsleigh. He’s certainly not making plans for the 2014 Olympics in Russia.
“That’s too far in the future to even think about it,” he said.
And too soon.
“I can’t even imagine going through another four years (of competition and training),” said Rush. “It’s sort of the end of a six-year journey that my wife (Krysta) and I decided to do. Our plan all along was that we’d go to 2010 and maybe make the Olympics, and then we’d re-evaluate things and see where we’d go from there.”
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com