Morning Read: Holcomb, US bobsled triumph in Lake Placid

As NCPR reported on Friday, the US bobsled team went into this weekend’s World Championships in Lake Placid with a lot to prove.  It’s been a tough year on the World Cup tour — so tough that the team actually sat out the end of the season.

But that rest and training period paid off this weekend, when Steven Holcomb and Steve Langton roared to a first-place finish in the two-man competition, the first championship in that category ever in US history.

Here’s how the US bobsled team announced the win:

Steven Holcomb (Park City, Utah) and Steve Langton (Melrose, Mass.) claimed the first two-man bobsled World Championship title ever for the U.S. in the 2012 contest for the crown.  All three U.S. teams entered into the competition posted top nine finishes to cap a successful two-man season for the program.

“It feels phenomenal to be World Champion,” Holcomb said. “You know, we won the World Championships here in 2009 and it was great, but this is my first two-man title.  I think that the hard work we put in during the off-season and all the work we’ve put in this season has really paid off.”

The Associated Press’s John Kekis reported the triumph this way:

Call Steven Holcomb Mr. Icebreaker.

Three years ago, Holcomb, the top driver on the U.S. bobsled team, broke a 50-year gold-medal drought for America in four-man competition at the Bobsled World Championships. Two years ago, he won the first four-man Olympic gold for his country since 1948, and on Sunday he went where no U.S. bobsledder had gone before — to the top of the podium in two-man at worlds.

And he did it in a sled he had never raced.

“That’s going to take a little while to sink in,” said Holcomb, of Park City, Utah. “My world championship medal it had been 50 years. My (Olympic) gold medal was 62 years. And now this — never, ever. This is no years. It’s going to take a little bit to sink in.”

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