By Dan Plouffe
Ottawa bobsledder Cody Sorensen’s Olympics weren’t the way he imagined six years of training culminating, it was more like a nightmare. On pace for the second-best time about two-thirds of the way through the course in the second run of the four-man competition, his sled tipped going into a corner, ending his hopes of a podium performance.
Sorensen and fellow brakemen Jesse Lumsden and Ben Coakwell had unexpectedly been switched into Justin Kripps’ sled on the morning of the final training run after pushing for driver Chris Spring all season.
Upon touching down in Ottawa, Sorensen said it was “hard to tell if that was the right decision or not” given that they were set to contend for a medal before the crash, but that news of the change of plans was devastating for close-knit Team Spring, which had been ranked fifth in the world entering the Games.
“That was the whole plan for the year,” noted Sorensen, who spoke in depth with Spring about how team chemistry played such a big part in the team’s success in his podcast on riseathlete.com, which played in the lead-up to the Olympics. “Even before we were on ice or started doing bobsleigh, we wanted to put the team together and find that chemistry and that synergy. We knew from previous years’ experience that that’s what you need to be a successful four-man crew.
“We’re bobsledders. We’re professionals and this is what we do for our living. We are somewhat interchangeable, but the four guys that are part of Team Spring, those are my best friends. They’ve been my best friends over the past couple of months, and Spring was definitely in our hearts when we were pushing for Kripps.
“Right after we crashed, we made it back to the top, and Chris and I hugged it out and for probably two minutes and just bawled our eyes out.
“It was a pretty emotional night for a lot of reasons. It’s my first Olympic race, something I’d looked forward to for many years. I put six years into the sport and had a run and a half at the Olympics. It’s somewhat disappointing.
“It was disappointing for him too. We finished the year with him ranked near the top of the world and he loses his crew and his equipment the last day before the race and ends up finishing 13th at the Olympic Games.
“Overall, it was a general sense of disappointment for sure.”
Prior to the Games, Sorensen was expecting that his first Olympics would likely be his only appearance, but he found that there remains a desire to return to bobsledding – in part in hopes of rewriting a new ending, he acknowledged.
“I figured as long as I performed to the best of my abilities and we pushed well as a crew that there’d be a sense of closure,” Sorensen explained. “Seeing how close we could have been – the, ‘what if?’ – now that I’m back in Ottawa, I find that itch is still there. I’m not totally convinced that I’m done at this point.”
Before the Games, the University of Guelph finance grad was hired as an RBC Olympian to be part of the program that sends athlete ambassadors to share inspirational messages with communities across the country, while also providing them with skills to pursue careers after sport.
That will keep him busy through the summer, and then Sorensen plans to reevaluate his future in bobsleigh towards the fall.
“If I can swing both at this time, I think I’ll try to do it,” he added.
A bit of a “consolation prize” from Sochi for Sorensen was that the area in which his efforts matter most – the push-start – his team ranked tied for a gold medal. They recorded the second-fastest start times in each heat, and tied Latvia for the best combined start times through the first two runs.
“I’m not sure a Canadian four-man crew has done that in the last few Olympic Games,” Sorensen highlighted. “That’s definitely something to be pretty proud of.”