Two Olympic silver medals for TUM student Florian Bauer

“Like a roller coaster, but with your eyes shut and no seatbelt”

First, it’s of course the success that keeps me going right now. Without that, it’s just hard to stay motivated. But almost more important is the fact that bobsledding is a team sport – even more so in the four-man than the two-man sled. That’s a lot of fun. And I’m also tinkering and trying things out all the time with the equipment. Just trying to tease out another hundredth of a second here and there.

Well, of course there’s also the big adrenaline surge. It’s like riding a roller coaster with your eyes shut and no seatbelt – but even crazier. That’s bobsledding.

Our normal season starts in October with the first runs. In October 2021 we had already been in Beijing for three weeks. Just to start familiarizing ourselves with the track so we wouldn’t be starting from scratch at the Games. At the end of November, the tightly scheduled World Cup started, with one event after another. We were still racing two weeks before we flew to China. I spent a week at home and then we went to a sort of quarantine training camp to rule out the possibility of a positive test shortly before departure. And then we left for China at the end of January.

That was probably one of the worst things. It was with you all the time. Until our departure in Frankfurt, with everyone on board, knowing that they had cleared the biggest hurdle – and that we’d all be negative on arrival.

We know at least four years in advance where the games are taking place. So we were prepared. Naturally I have a rough idea of the situation in China. So it’s certainly not ideal. But in the end, we were there as athletes. For almost everyone, it’s their career. We all actually tried to block that out and say: “Okay, we’re going there. But we’re there to compete and hopefully to win a medal. And that’s our focus.”

I travelled in a bubble. I arrived in a separate terminal and only saw the fully masked volunteers and customs agents. After that I hardly saw any Chinese people. Our bus followed a police escort through closed-off streets to the hotel. From that point, I only went back and forth between our accommodation and the bobsledding track. The few Chinese people I dealt with were all very nice and helpful.

Well, at the events there was a little bit of Olympic spirit. And at meals I talked with a few Canadians and Americans and stood around with athletes from a couple of other countries at the track. And there were 20 or 30 more cameras at the starting line than at other competitions. For me that was another reminder of the sheer scale of this sporting event.

As a pusher, my role is indeed to push the bobsled, which means giving it as much acceleration as possible for the start. That’s the only way to make sure the pilot enters the track with as much speed as possible and make a clean run to the bottom. When I’m sitting in the two-man or four-man sled, there’s not much left for me to do after that. I just try to be as aerodynamic as possible.

Bobsled pushers generally have a background in some kind of feeder sport. People start out with bobsledding fairly late, generally no younger than 18. We have a minimum age of 16 in our discipline. That’s because the spine needs to be fully developed due to the centrifugal forces in the curves. I did athletics and competed in 100 and 200 meter sprints. Another sprinter who was invited to try out as a bobsled pilot asked me if I wanted to give pushing a try. So I went to Berchtesgaden for a tryout. They said that I was looking pretty good and I should stick with it. That was six years ago.

Bobsled training doesn’t differ very much from athletics training, or sprint training. For me, that was definitely an advantage. To make the transition from sprinter to pusher, I just had to build up some weight. So there was a little more strength training and a little less sprint training. And we do a few other things like yoga and stretching sessions. That pretty much fills up the week.

My point of contact at TUM is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stephan Freudenstein, a professor at the TUM School of Engineering and Design. At the start of the semester we draw up a strategic plan: What will I do? What won’t I do? And what actually makes sense? The biggest accommodation on the part of TUM is with the holiday semesters: I can take as many as I want.

Over the past four years it was huge. From October to March I’m busy and on the road 24/7. That makes it very difficult to do anything for university. Sometimes, when I’m lucky, I can write a couple of exams in March. But actually my studies tend to take place in the summer. Sometimes I have up to eight exams at once.

That’s right. But even if it bothers me sometimes how long my studies are taking: dropping out was never an option. This persistence is another thing I’ve learned through competitive sports. I just accept that it’s going to take longer for me than for the others. And I’ve learned to live with that over time.