Boraska Trades the Boat for the Bob

Ask Olympic medallist Igor Boraska what he enjoys most about the sport of rowing and he might answer being out on the water, the smooth, rhythmic gliding motion of the boat or even the slow precision of a stroke.

This week however the 32-year rower old will put on a crash helmet, squeeze his 1m90 frame between a brake man and the number 2 seat, and hurtle down a track of ice at close to 150 km per hour on the Park City Olympic track.

 “I’ve always liked roller coasters – I’ve visited all the large theme parks in the U.S. And I love speed and motorcycles and that sort of thing” says Boraska.

Well you need to enjoy the adrenalin rush to participate in the Olympic bobsleigh competitions. A race which consists of racing a bob down a twisting 1340 metre course that includes 15 banked turns and a slick, icy surface.

Boraska and three crewmates took up the challenge hitting the ice for their debut Olympic run next week, in the process making Boraska one of the few athletes to have competed in both a summer and a winter Olympic Games and the first Croatian to do so.

From Boat to Bob

The adventure began in 1998 when Ivan Sola the current pilot of the bob sleigh was looking to build a crew and turned to the powerful rowers of the Croatian coxed four who had just brought home a silver World Rowing Championships medal.

Boraska was the only one of the four interested in the offer but it was not until after the Olympic Games in 2000 that he decided to take up the challenge seriously.

With his Sydney Olympic bronze in the men’s eight safely tucked away, Boraska decided to take a break from rowing. A pause just long enough to follow a bobsleigh instruction course near Innsbruck in Austria and come back with his sleighing licence in November of the same year.

But the rower at heart didn’t abandon the boat altogether and returned to his number seven seat in the Croatian men’s eight to race in the 2001 Rowing World Championships in Lucerne and take the silver medal.

It was after Lucerne that Boraska contacted Sola once again and the bobsleigh crew began to take shape. Sola recruited two other strong athletes to complete the four, a sprint runner and a long jumper – “A real motley crew” says Boraska of the bunch.

Following in Jamaican footsteps

The team is receiving huge media coverage in Croatia and is being compared by many to the Jamaican bobsleigh team who gained world renown when they first competed in the Calgary Olympics in 1988. The Jamaicans warmed hearts worldwide and even inspired a popular Walt Disney film.

Boraska agrees that you can draw parallels between the two teams, “Bobsleigh is a new sport in Croatia, it exists only since two years. Also, all four of us are from Split, along the Adriatic coasts which means that we are training for a winter sport in a very warm climate.”

So how does a rower meet the demands of training for the bobsleigh along the Adriatic coast?

“Training for the bobsleigh is different than training for rowing” says Boraska.

“I had the necessary physical power from my training for rowing but lacked that explosive burst of energy necessary to push the bobsleigh at the start.” adds the now 100 kilo plus athlete.

The start is the most important element in the bobsleigh race as a quick time at the start usually correlates to a quick time overall.

So training for the Games has consisted in lot of sprints, weightlifting and practising the all-important initial push as well hopping into the sleigh which has to be done with cat-like precision in order not to lose precious seconds.

A model bobsleigh was built for them at the athletics course in Split for that purpose “We should be spending much more time on the ice but we just don’t have the resources” admits Boraska.

The team has nonetheless managed to compete in several races in the build up to the winter Olympic Games, in Albertville, Cortina D’Ampezzo and even racing down the infamous “Devil’s Highway” in Lake Placid in order to gain the valuable points for Olympic Qualification.

Now that the Games have begun all they need to do is put it all into practice on the Park City Olympic track next week. And although the team is not a serious medal contender, Boraska says that they are aiming for a place in the top thirty.

Medal or no medal, it is still history in the making. And who knows, the four Croatians might return to Split with a proposal for a Disney film.