If you work hard at everything you do, there is no limit to what you can achieve.
That is the message Melissa Lotholz told Fort Assiniboine School students April 25, during a series of assemblies.
Lotholz is a member of Canada’s National Bobsleigh team and this year, along with fellow brakeman Cynthia Appiah and pilot Kaillie Humphries, she finished second in the World Cup Bobsleigh circuit.
“Can I tell you a secret? A bobsled is just an oversized toboggan,” she told a group of Kindergarten to Grade 2 students. “And we are just a bunch of really big kids who race our toboggans down the hill as fast as we can.”
With the difference being that the ‘toboggans’ Lotholz and her teammates use weigh in excess of 360 pounds and generally reach speeds not seen by regular tobogganers. Lotholz noted on the World Cup track in Whistler, B.C., it is upwards of 150 km/h.
She then asked the students for ways to make the bobsled faster. Answers ranged from making the ice colder, and therefore more slippery, to running along and pushing the sled before jumping in.
“Which is exactly what we do and the biggest part of my job is to help push the sled so we can get off to the quickest start possible,” she said, adding bobsledders also try to do everything they can to reduce friction, such as tucking themselves into the sled tightly. “That is what we call aerodynamics, lessening our resistance to the air.”
To make bobsledders as aerodynamic outside the sled as in, athletes wear what Lotholz calls her “super suit.”
“It is a very stretchy, spandex suit, which is specially designed so that it allows the wind just to flow over it without causing drag,” she said, adding the athletes and coaching staff are always fine tuning the sled.
However, equipment is only one piece of the puzzle. Lotholz said the human component is what truly makes a sled fast.
“That is why I spend hours and hours working really hard to make sure I am as strong and fast as possible,” she said, adding a lot of the work began well before she was an athlete, when she was the students age.
Lotholz then talked about how her life growing up on a farm outside of Barrhead prepared her for her life as an athlete.
From as early as she can remember, Lotholz said she always loved being active and being outdoors. Early on that meant helping out on the farm, but as she grew older she focused a lot of that energy on sports.
She told the students she signed up for every sport she could — soccer, volleyball, basketball and figure skating, but her favourite was track and field.
It was this love for track and field, which would eventually lead her to bobsleigh. In her final high school meet, she attracted the attention of a University of Alberta Golden Bears coach who recruited her as a middle distance sprinter.
As Lotholz’s university running career was coming to an end, a former Golden Bear teammate, Christine De Bruin, convinced her to try out for the bobsled team.
“I watched my friend pushing a bobsled going places all over the world and I thought if she could do it, maybe I could too,” said Lotholz of her decision three years ago.
She concluded by saying the one thing she has learned through her journey to become an elite bobsleigh athlete is to work hard at whatever you do.
“When I was young, I didn’t know my path would take me to bobsleigh, but it is because I worked hard on the farm, in sports and at school that I am here now, being able to travel the world as part of Canada’s bobsleigh team and hopefully go to the Winter Olympics,” Lotholz said.
