Bobsledding and Slo-Pitch have about as much in common as peanut butter and mustard.
Both are athletic activities, but they don’t mix very well.
You wouldn’t exactly go to a Slo-Pitch game and find someone who could be a part of an Olympic bobsled crew.
Would you?
Well, don’t be so sure. That exact combination of Bobsled and Slo-Pitch has completely changed the life of London’s Josh Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick rounded the bases a couple of times that day and he caught the eye of someone playing against him.
“It just so happened that the technical director at the time for Bobsled Canada was on the other team. She approached me afterward about coming out for a bobsled I.D. camp and the rest is history.”
Kirkpatrick is a bona fide member of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) and regularly rockets down icy tracks all over the world in search of tenths and hundredths of seconds.
Standing at the top of one of those tracks can be slightly intimidating.
It’s icy. It’s steep and you can’t see the bottom.
“There is a guy that I room with,” says Kirkpatrick. “His name is Ben Coakwell. I think he has described it best as going down a rollercoaster in a garbage can.”
Not quite Niagara Falls in a barrel, but not exactly a distant cousin of something like that, either.
Kirkpatrick has always been an excellent athlete and that is actually what was on display on the diamond that day. In high school, he took up pole vault at Saunders Secondary School and with the guidance and instruction of Keith Heard, Kirkpatrick earned himself a scholarship to Cornell.
Other than the inherent perceived danger, pole vault and bobsled might also appear to be quite far apart in terms of their similarities, but Kirkpatrick points out that the best of the best really do come from everywhere.
“The beauty of bobsled is that everybody on the team comes from a sporting background. We have everybody from professional football players to unbelievable U Sports and NCAA athletes. The important part for BCS is to identify an athlete first and then change them into a bobsledder.”
One of the other tricks that might make the world’s best magicians jealous is finding a way to get the most powerful start possible and then get all of that power into a fairly tiny bobsleigh.”
If you are watching for good signs for Canada during the Olympics, according to Kirkpatrick, one of the best signs is something you can’t really even notice.
“We get as small as possible, so there’s no drag. Hopefully, you don’t even see us. That’s the No. 1 priority. Then the driver takes over and dials it in… and luckily, we have three of the best pilots in the world and they get us down there safely.”
Over the eight events that have been held on this year’s World Cup circuit, Canada has four medals in men’s four-man, six medals in men’s two-man and five medals in two-woman bobsleigh, including three first-place finishes.
Fellow Londoner, Kopacz, has already won a gold medal in the two-man event and will also be going for gold in the four-man.
And a gold medal or any medal at all would be quite the accomplishment for a guy who got his start in the sport on the Slo-Pitch bases of Calgary, Alta.
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