It is almost becoming old hat for Barrhead native and Canadian National Team Bobsleigh member Melissa Lotholz. Another year, another top two overall Bobsleigh World Cup finish.
In just her second year on the national team Lotholz, as part of Kaillie Humphries’ two-person bobsleigh team, captured her second World Cup Bobsleigh trophy. This time for being the World Cup circuit point leaders. Last year the duo finished in second place.
When the Barrhead Leader last spoke to Lotholz in February in Igls, Austria, she had just won a silver medal in the two-person event at the World Championships and was preparing to compete in the first ever four-women World Cup test event.
On Tuesday, March 15, Lotholz visited the Leader office to talk about what happened during the four-person event and the season.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of downtime between winning our silver medal before we started preparing for the four-person event,” she said, adding a typical World Cup event is a week long, for the World Championships it’s two.
In the first week the two-person races take place and in the second it is the four-person events as well as skeleton.
“Training was going really well, but it was a little more complicated than other weeks,” she said, adding it was because of the added chore of preparing a new sled for competition.
In early January, Lotholz and Humpries were joined by fellow bobsledders, Cynthia Appiah and Genevieve Thibault, to become the first all women four-person team to compete on the World Cup circuit.
However, Lotholz, said the sled they usually use for the events was loaned out to Canadian bobsleigh pilot, Christopher Spring, so the team ended up having to rent another sled for the event.
“So it took a little bit of extra time getting the sled welding and getting everything aligned,” she said, adding by the time the four-woman event took place the team were confident they and it were ready.
The event took place on the last day of the world championships with four teams competing, the Canadians, two teams, the United States, piloted by Elena Meyers Taylor, and Romania. Besides Humphries, Taylor is the only other woman bobsledder to pilot both two-person and a mixed gender four person sled.
Because the team piloted by Humphries had been competing as a unit for a number of races, the coaching staff decided for the test event to keep them together. The other Canadian sled was composed of Alysia Rissling, Janine McCue, Julia Corrente and Christine DeBruin.
“It is actually kind of funny. We only had eight girls and after deciding to keep our team together the other four have only slid four-man here and there, and three of the four have all driven at some point.” Lotholz said. The only the brakeman in the group was McCue.
Canada finished one and two, with Team Humphries finishing on top with a time of 1:47.35. The other Canadian sled, piloted by Rissling, finished with a time of 1:48.11. In a bit of an upset the Romanian finished in third ahead of the Americans.
“I think it’s really cool that the Romanian team was there and doing so well. In the bobsled world the powerhouse nations are the U.S. Russia, Germany, Switzerland and Canada, “ she said. “To have someone like Romania competing in the four-man event, it’s really encouraging and I think it says a lot to the other nations. If Romania can do it, then anybody can do it and I think having them competing was as significant as us competing in the regular four-man event on the World Cup circuit.”
After the test event Lotholz and Humphries returned to Königssee, Germany to compete in the final World Cup event of the season.
She said as an athlete competing on the World Cup circuit, during a non-Olympic year, the goal is to try to peak at the World Championships.
“Physically, mentally and emotionally you are training and hoping you are able to peak and deliver your best performance for the World Champs and so it is interesting to have a World Cup race after,” Lotholz said. “It takes a lot more will power than a typical race weekend because in the back of your mind you think you should be done.”
Adding to the potential of having a lackluster performance was the fact that the duo had pretty much sewed up first place in the World Cup standings. Thanks to seven straight podium finishes the team had a commanding lead in the standings.
“Essentially if we finished the race on all four runners we were set to win first,” she joked.
In reality a collapse didn’t need to be quite that dramatic. According to the calculations made by Lotholz’s mother, a combination of a win by American Jamie Greubel Poser’s sled and Team Humphries finishing in eighth place or lower would have caused them to lose the overall points championship.
However, Lotholz said the team was especially motivated make sure they put in a good performance.
“We really wanted to finish the season in style by winning our final race and say that we were able to podium in every race,” she said.
Which is something Lotholz and Humphries partially accomplished. They did manage to be on the podium once again, but they just missed winning. After their first run they were in first place, leading the American team by 0.03 seconds, but unfortunately due to a spectacular second run by the Americans they ended up in second place.
“It was a bit of a bitter sweet moment, we won silver, which is a great accomplishment, but we were leading so we were disappointed we couldn’t come out with the win,” she said, adding winning the overall World Cup point championship helped dull the disappointment.
As for what happens next for Lotholz she said she isn’t sure, but after taking about a month off, she will be resuming her training schedule in Calgary starting in early April.
But between now and then, Lotholz has been invited to Whistler with a number of other Canadian breakmen to take part in a weeklong pilot school.
“Ideally if I am in the sport for the long term I would love to get into the driver seat, but until then I am really just concentrating on improving as a breakman and pairing up with Kaillie for the 2018 PyeongChang (South Korea) Olympics,” Lotholz said, adding after the driving school she might decide driving isn’t for her. “I’ve been told it doesn’t take long to discover if being a pilot is something you were destined to do. Either you have the instincts or don’t.”
During her off-season, when she isn’t training, Lotholz will be busy updating her website and looking for sponsors, something she wished she had more time for.
“Even in the off season, there isn’t a lot of time between dryland training sessions which can last anywhere from three-and-half hours followed by therapy on top of that for another three hours,” she said. “Training is really a full time job. Making sure you are crossing all your T’s and dotting all your I’s in terms of nutrition and getting enough sleep. Being able to have sponsors really makes me able to do that and to make sure every time I show up to train, it counts.”
If anyone is interested in sponsoring Lotholz or would just like to follow her journey as a national team athlete go to www.lotholz.ca.
