Geoff Bodine's Bobsled Perseverance Yields Olympic Gold

How ironic that 1986 Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine may look back at his storied racing career and decide his single greatest glory came in a race he didn't even drive in.

Standing alongside the Olympic sliding track Saturday night in Vancouver, Canada, with the four-man American bobsled team one final run away from its long-coming gold medal, the racing veteran who was the driving force behind their American-made "Night Train" sled gave the team all he knew to give.

"I'm a racer, I know you need to concentrate, so I just looked at them and relayed the confidence,'' Bodine, 59, told FanHouse on Tuesday. "I knew how difficult it was. I knew they had it in them.

"Afterward, when they won, they let me take a photo with the gold medal around my neck and let me tell you, it felt good."

That gold medal felt good for the entire country, too. Amidst a sea of sleek, muscled athletes, here was stocky, balding Steven Holcomb, sort of an Olympics everyman, flying off the starting line with his teammates in blazingly fast starts, piloting his sled through the harrowing "50-50 curve" and setting track records on a course infamous for its crashes.

Bodine is the namesake and brainchild of the Bo-Dyn bobsleds that were used by the American teams. Actually, he's the "Bo," while the "Dyn" stands for Chassis Dynamics, the company owned by engineer Bob Cuneo, who designed and built the sleds.

"When you stop and realize that you've had a little part in something your whole country wanted," Bodine said, "it is very humbling to have everyone cheering.''

And to think that Bodine wasn't even planning to go to the Olympics until he received a phone call last weekend -- a phone call 18 years in the making.

"The athletes want you there, you need to be there,'' a member of the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project told him.

"We're a non-profit and always so tight on money, I hated to spend the money,'' Bodine explained, still sounding a bit apologetic. "But someone offered to pay for my flight. I flew out Saturday and was very glad I was there, hopefully with a little inspiration for them.''

Inspiration indeed.

Ten years ago, almost to the week, Bodine lay unconscious in a Daytona Beach hospital after suffering serious injuries in a horrific 11-car accident in a NASCAR truck series race at Daytona International Speedway. He broke a wrist, an ankle, his cheekbone and a vertebrae in his back in addition to suffering a severe concussion.

But he returned to race two years later in the 2002 Daytona 500, where he finished third for an under-funded team driving an underdog car.

It was a theme the U.S. Bobsled Federation could relate to. And even through all his personal adversity, Bodine's commitment to the project never wavered from the relentless pursuit he began in 1992, when he set out to give the underdog American team a properly competitive, American-made bobsled so they could beat the all-powerful European teams.

The "Night Train"" is the latest edition of the Bo-Dyn sled and it carried Holcomb, the driver, and his team to the first four-man bobsled Olympic gold medal for America since 1948. The same team won the four-man World Championship in January.

"I've made the comparison of winning the gold medal and winning the Daytona 500," Bodine said. "They are very similar in that the Daytona 500 is NASCAR's biggest reward, but that's where the similarities end. In NASCAR, I was fortunate to have a great fanbase and I appreciate that. In the Olympics, the fanbase is a little bit larger. ... it's an entire country."

For Bodine, no small part of the project has been about patriotism, and that is plainly evident to anyone who has come in contact with the Bo-Dyn Bobsled project over the last two decades.

"Geoff deserves a lot of credit for the gold medal really,'' said fellow NASCAR driver and New York native Boris Said, whose father Bob Said was part of the United States' bobsled teams in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics.

"I remember wondering why is he spending so much time and money on this,'' Said said of Bodine. "And then you meet the team and all the athletes and you get caught up in it immediately. Geoff just took it one step farther and he and Bob Cuneo made it a winning program.

"Not only did they help America get that gold medal, they assured the future of the sport here.''

And that is as crucial as the shiny hardware won last week, Bodine said. His work is about creating a legacy, not just a triumph here and there.

Relying on his personal celebrity and parts of the winning paychecks earned during a successful NASCAR Sprint Cup career in the 1980s and 90s, Bodine has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and recruited engineers and designers, like Cuneo, to bring the Americans up to speed in a sport traditionally dominated by the Europeans and well-financed by their countries.

The Bo-Dyn sleds are only available for the American teams and cost them nothing. This year, Bodine said they are developing a sled for commercial sale. It will be a scaled-down version of the top-secret "Night Train" Olympic design -- the hope being that the success and popularity of this Olympic gold medal inspires more young athletes to take up the sport.

"There is just a tremendous feeling of pride and being an American,'' Bodine said, still clearly relishing the experience. "There is a lot of pride in what we've done. We've influenced the way bobsledding is looked at around the world and increased the awareness of it.

"Success sometimes causes you to work harder and that's the one message I'd like to get out,'' Bodine said.

"We're not done.''

And he's not finished on the race track, either. This weekend, a month shy of his 60th birthday, Bodine will compete in NASCAR's Camping World Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, driving the No. 95 truck. All of the names of the American bobsled athletes will be on the truck.