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Friday, 11 January, 2002, 15:05 GMT
Celebrity slide show
Freeze frame: The Jamaican story became a film
Prince Albert of Monaco has been a great ambassador for bobsleigh. BBC Sport Online looks at other well-known faces who have taken part in the sport.
Prince Michael of Kent As a vintage car enthusiast and president of the Royal Automobile Club, the Prince clearly has a taste for keeping on the move. He was even part of the team in 1992 that broke the 1,000-mile record for cars over 5,000cc in a 1929 Bentley Special.
And his driving skills were used on the ice for several years when he represented the British bobsleigh team. He was a reserve for the 1972 Winter Olympics. He first grew his distinctive beard to hide scars left by a high-speed bobsleigh accident while in practice for the World Championships in Italy in 1971.
Sir Steven Redgrave
Britain's most successful Olympian created history by winning a fifth rowing gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. But he is a winter sports fan and took time out from his main sport to experience the thrills of bobsleigh. During the 1989-90 season, he was a member of the British bobsleigh team. And he was among the four-man team which triumphed at the national championships in 1989.
Dudley Stokes Helicopter pilot Dudley Stokes and the Jamaican team made headlines around the world at the 1988 Calgary Games.
Their first-ever entry in the bobsleigh ran into trouble when the bob overturned and they were dragged along the ice. The mishap, and the story behind their entry into the sport, inspired the movie Cool Runnings. But the team, known as the Reggae Rockets and with Stokes driving, were not merely a novelty act and managed to finish 14th at the 1994 Games, ahead of both teams from the United States. Stokes called a halt to his bobsleigh run after finishing 21st at Nagano four years later.
Edwin Moses Moses was king of the 400m hurdles for a decade.
The American runner won gold at the 1976 and the 1984 Olympics, and triumphed in a total of 122 consecutive races between 1977 and 1987. He later went on to compete internationally in the bobsleigh as a member of the US two-man and four-man sleds. Moses was a member of the winning American side at the International Push Competition in 1990. A year later, he was a bronze medallist in the World Cup two-man event.
John Regis/Marcus Adam Regis and fellow ex-sprinter Marcus Adam once harboured Winter Olympic ambitions.
The former British Olympic 200m runners trained in Germany and on the dry slope at Thorpe Park in Surrey. And in 2000, the pair made their bobsleigh debut on real ice at a British training session in Lillehammer, scene of the 1994 Winter Games, Regis and Adam were recruited to the British training squad by former Olympian Lenny Paul. He recognised that the power and speed required over the vital first few seconds of a bobsleigh run were second nature to 200m runners. Adam had impressed the team's performance directors by posting one of the fastest start times ever recorded by a British bobsleigher. He has been rewarded with a place in Salt Lake City. But Regis failed to achieve his historic target - to become the first British athlete to win medals at both the summer and winter games.
Michael Schumacher Four-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher is unlikely to have been daunted by the speeds he experienced when he tried his hand at bobsleigh earlier this year.
Schumi was a guest in a four-man bob at a practice race before a World Cup meet in St Moritz in January. The Ferrrari ace, who was not involved in pushing the bob, experienced a top speed of 137kph, close to the 141km per hour that professional riders average. "It was very interesting and fast at the end," said the German who sat at number two. "But it was very different from Formula One."
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Other top Bobsleigh stories:
Links to more Bobsleigh stories are at the foot of the page.
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Links to more Bobsleigh stories
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