02/18/2026
With all the bobsleigh and skeleton events leaving their marks on the Olympic Games - it often drums up a bit of "I could see myself doing that!" Or at least the fascination with speed and adrenaline creates a bit of "wonder if I could do that" ..ism.
Check out this article by Matt Blair of Vancouver is Awesome:
(and don't forget to check out vancouverisawesome.com)
"How I accidentally found myself on Team Canada's skeleton team (Vancouver Is Awesome's general manager reflects back on his days speeding 140 km/h face-first down an ice chute)"
Every time I tell someone I used to be a skeleton athlete — and yes, even wore the maple leaf for Canada national skeleton team a few times — the reaction is immediate and predictable.
“That’s crazy.”
Followed quickly by: “How do you even get into that?”
Fair question. Skeleton isn’t exactly beer league softball. It’s not something your parents sign you up for after piano lessons. It’s face-first, chin hovering millimetres above ice, rocketing down a frozen luge track at 140 kilometres per hour while your brain politely asks what the hell you’re doing.
So here’s the story.
Like a lot of you, I was sitting on the couch watching the Olympics thinking: “Damn. That looks cool.” The kind of cool that makes no rational sense. The kind of cool that probably shortens your lifespan but lengthens your dinner party stories.
I’d heard tourists could try it at the Whistler Sliding Centre, so I did what any modern adventurer does — I Googled it. This was 2012 Google. The internet still felt like a filing cabinet someone had kicked over.
I landed, accidentally, on the website for the BC Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association. Wrong door. I knew it. These were the serious people. The stopwatch people. The Olympic people.
Still, I fired off an email:
“I’m 27. Past my athletic prime. Is there a recreational way to try this without humiliating myself?”
The reply came from Pat Brown — former coach of the Jamaica national bobsleigh team, which already tells you this sport attracts characters.
His message was pure sliding-sport optimism: “You are never too old to have fun…. I recommend you take the Talent ID Camp.”
Talent ID Camp.
I had emailed the wrong address looking for a novelty experience and somehow ended up invited to try out.
This is how sliding works. You knock on the door and someone hands you a helmet.
Suiting up for Canada remains the privilege of my life
I showed up. Ran the sprints. Did the jumps. Made the provincial dry-land standard. A few months later I was in Whistler, lying on a sled for the first time, trying to remember which way was up while gravity did unspeakable things to my face.
From there, the path forks.
If you hit national standards at a Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton or provincial camp, you can get fast-tracked. Exceptional sprinters can find themselves in Olympic conversations within a season or two. It’s rare, but it happens.
I wasn’t that guy.
I made the provincial standard. So I grinded.
Seven winters. Driving the Sea-to-Sky in the dark. Sliding four or five nights a week. Training for one annual sprint test in Calgary that determined whether I got another crack at climbing the ladder.
Skeleton isn’t glamorous. It’s frostbitten fingers. It’s bruised hips. It’s explaining to your accountant why your hobby looks like a second mortgage.
But eventually, I did get to suit up for Canada. And it remains the privilege of my life.
Here’s the part most people don’t realize: you don’t need to make a team to be part of it.
Through the provincial association, you can slide recreationally. There’s a whole tribe of people who come out “just for fun” — which is what everyone says until race day. You’ll share ice time with current and former Olympians because the sliding world is tiny. You might volunteer as a forerunner before World Cup races. You’ll meet the kind of beautiful eccentrics who willingly hurl themselves down an ice chute headfirst and then debate coffee beans afterwards.
There’s something about 140 km/h on ice that creates instant mutual respect. It doesn’t matter whether you’re chasing medals or chasing a story to tell at Christmas dinner. You’ve all stared down the same frozen tunnel.
And if all of this sounds like too much commitment — if seven winters feels aggressive — you can simply book an experience day at the Whistler Sliding Centre and try skeleton or bobsleigh for a couple hundred bucks.
That’s the link I was originally looking for.
The difference is, I accidentally clicked the harder one.
Sometimes that’s how the best stories start.
Matt Blair is the general manager at Vancouver Is Awesome. He's been watching skeleton races at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics with great interest.
