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Barrhead native prepares for upcoming World Cup Bobsleigh season

How do you keep cool in the summer? If you are Melissa Lotholz the answer is simple — surround yourself with ice. And luckily for her it is something she can easily do as one half of Canada’s top women bobsleigh team.

How do you keep cool in the summer? If you are Melissa Lotholz the answer is simple — surround yourself with ice.

And luckily for her it is something she can easily do as one half of Canada’s top women bobsleigh team.

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. The year before the duo finished in second place.

For the majority of the summer, Lotholz, along with the rest of the Canadian Bobsleigh Team, has been preparing for the upcoming World Cup season at the national team’s base in Calgary and its famous Ice House at Canada Olympic Park.

After the World Cup season ended in late February, Lotholz was able to take close to a month off her training in which she was able to spend about half of it at home in Barrhead.

“The Ice House and Canadian Olympic Park (COP) are such amazing facilities,” she said during a telephone interview after a practice session at the Ice House on Aug. 23. “It would be difficult to give up the opportunities these facilities provide us and not train here.”

The Ice House is an indoor facility that allows bobsleigh, luge and Skelton athletes to practice their push skills all year round.

For the first two months, starting in early April, the majority of Lotholz’s training was spent in the gym working on building up their core and stabilization muscles. After building a base, Lotholz’s training routine grew to include track and field style sprinting and weightlifting.

“Come July, we transition from the sprint track to the Ice House and we start doing single pushes, eventually moving up to team pushes,” Lotholz said, adding this part of a bobsleigh athlete’s training is the key to having a successful season. “In order for us to get faster, it’s all the work we do in the summer. In the winter, it is hard to get faster because of the demands on your body from sliding, travel and being out in the cold and stuff like that.”

And so far, it looks like all the work Lotholz and her teammates are doing this off-season is paying dividends.

During the off-season the national team coaches hold two push testing camps. These camps are designed not only to help teach the athletes proper push techniques, but to help the athletes and coaches evaluate how their training is progressing. The first push camp was held last week.

“Things went super well and it was nice to see that all the hours I spent on the track and at the gym have been paying off because my pushes are coming together very well,” she said.

The next camp will be sometime in late September. Another reason why the camps are important is because the camps are a major factor in deciding what driver and program athletes will be paired with. For the last two years, Lotholz has been teamed up with Humphries, Canada’s, and perhaps the world’s, top female bobsleigh pilot. However, that doesn’t mean that this year will be the same.

“I know they (coaches) have been recruiting people,” Lotholz said, adding her position, as a brakeman does not require a lot of technical skill. “My job kind of boils down to speed and strength and being able to apply it to a sled. Some people can come in and do very well and some can’t.”

One of the pools of athletes bobsledders often come from is track and field, most notably sprinters and the national team has invited a number of summer sport athletes, including those who just finished competing in the Summer Olympics in Rio to a tryout camp. In fact, that is how Lotholz, who was a short distance and relay runner with University of Alberta, became involved in bobsleigh.

“I guess we’ll see when they come down how they do. It could completely reorder things or it could change nothing,” she said. “That’s the joy of my sport, you just never know. In that way it’s a lot like farming.”

However, Lotholz is confident that after the final push camp she will once again be paired with Humphries in Canada’s top sled.

“I am super pleased with my push,” she said. “As it stands now I’m a tenth of second off the Canadian record and by September and the next camp my time will be that much better.”

When asked how she stays motivated to continue with the rigorous training schedule Lotholz said as an elite athlete it isn’t difficult to stay focused, adding she is always looking for inspiration and one of the events that has helped energize her lately was watching how well Canada did during the Olympic games in Rio.

“Watching the Olympics just brought an added level of excitement and realism to what we are all doing here,” she said. “Seeing them compete and fight through everything just inspires us to keep pushing towards our own Olympic dream that is only 16 months away.”

Currently, Lotholz is training five days a week, with Monday, Wednesday and Friday being the most intense. Mondays are usually spent at the track doing sprints while Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays are devoted to two-person team push starts. Tuesdays are devoted to four-person pushes and Thursday and Sunday are rest days. The length of the actual training day varies. Usually, it is between five to six hours, with the rest of the day being devoted to coaches’ informational sessions and things such as physiotherapy sessions.

Practicing and competing in the four-woman event is something Lotholz is especially excited about. At about the mid-season mark last year, Lotholz and Humphries, along with Cynthia Appiah and Genevieve Thibault, became the first all-women four person bobsleigh team to compete in a World Cup event against teams composed completely of men. Lotholz’s four-person women team also competed in the first World Cup sanctioned four-women event, which they won. Although nothing has been made official yet, Lotholz has heard through the grapevine that bobsleigh’s international body for the upcoming World Cup season is planning at the end of every men’s four person event, to hold a four-person women’s race, where countries could enter up to two sleds.

Although Lotholz is concerned that having to split her training between the two and four-person event might impact her performance in the two-person event, she said it is worth the risk.

“It is really exciting to be part of something that hopefully one day will become an Olympic event and open up more opportunities for women to become involved in the sport,” she said, adding there are also advantages to competing in the two disciplines. “At the end of the day pushing is pushing. That’s why you will see bobsledders when they can’t push sleds practice using anything they can get a hold of. I know I often practice at home by pushing a quad.”

Unfortunately, the one area where competing in the four-person event will definitely be a hindrance is funding — as an amateur athlete finding sponsorship is always a consideration.

Lotholz said although funding elite amateur athletes has increased in many sports thanks to Canada’s Own the Podium initiative, they are not sure the four-women will be included. The initiative was introduced prior to the Vancouver Olympics and gives funding to sports based on the potential of winning medals.

“Since the four-women’s team isn’t an Olympic event yet, we might have to self-fund. So as a federation, a woman’s team and individuals we are looking for sponsors to be able to compete and excel in both events,” Lotholz said. “But Barrhead has been great and it’s been awesome to see how Barrhead has gotten behind and supported me throughout my journey.”

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.


Barry Kerton

About the Author: Barry Kerton

Barry Kerton is the managing editor of the Barrhead Leader, joining the paper in 2014. He covers news, municipal politics and sports.
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