Lyndon Rush didn't sound quite like a joyful first-time Olympic medallist after capturing bronze with his tight-knit crew in the four-man bobsleigh event on Saturday (Feb. 27), the final event of the 2010 Games at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

He sounded like he was still thinking about one hundredth of a second: the distance by which German titan Andre Lange beat him out to claim the silver medal, after Rush led Lange for the first three runs of the event. Lange, racing third-last in the final run, laid down the fastest time of that heat, and when Rush slid right after Lange, he just barely lost his hold on the silver-medal spot.

“It wasn't triumphant then,” Rush said of pulling up in the Whistler track's outrun to see he'd slipped behind Lange. “It's starting to become triumphant now, you know what I mean, but at that point I was pretty mad. We had 'em for three (runs), and to give it away in the last heat, I was mad.

“Yeah, we won Olympic bronze, but I like racing, right, and when you come up short on the last heat, you're mad. You always want to see a (No.) 1 coming down in the last heat. But yeah, it's starting to set in that my guys did a great job, and you know what, I did a pretty good job.”

While Steven Holcomb and his teammates in the USA-1 sled closed out a triumphant victory to claim their country's first Olympic bobsleigh gold since 1948, the battle for second place was a dogfight between the veteran Lange, a four-time Olympic and world champion, and the rising Rush, who won his first World Cup medals this season with a gold and a bronze in four-man races and a victory in the St. Moritz two-man event.

Rush and brakemen Chris Le Bihan, David Bissett and Lascelles Brown claimed Canada's first medal in the four-man bobsleigh event since 1964, in Rush's debut Olympics. He and Lange also beat Holcomb, who had set two track records in his first two heats, with their times in the final heat.

But the Canadian pilot had contemplated making a run for the top of the podium, bolstered by the home-track advantage that he had observed affecting the outcome of recent world championship four-man races.

“In four-man it's an advantage to have more runs, so yeah, I thought we could do well, I thought we could win the race,” Rush said. “I never stopped thinking that we could win, until we got down to the bottom and I saw No. 2.”

Lange, the two-time Olympic champion in the four-man races and two-time winner of the two-man events, had some uncharacteristic struggles in his first runs, and was four hundredths of a second behind Rush heading into Saturday's final two runs.

Lange was nine hundredths of a second behind the pilot from Humboldt, Sask., after his third run, and then burst into the fastest fourth run of the competition to post a total time of three minutes, 24.84 seconds, to Rush's 3:24.85.
“(Lange) can still struggle and get a silver medal, that's what's insane. I had great runs, and we get a bronze. That's how good the Germans are, that's how good Andre is,” Rush said ruefully.

He added that his teammates – in a group that Le Bihan described as a “band of brothers” – have been “trying to cheer me up. They think I'm crazy for being upset.”

Kevin Kuske, Lange's longtime teammate, said the German team battled hard to win that silver, which marks the fifth Olympic medal for Lange and Kuske. Lange had declared the Olympic races in Whistler would mark the end of his storied sliding career, and his brakemen wore T-shirts emblazoned with gold letters spelling out, “Thank you Andre.”

“This silver medal is certainly worth as much as a gold. We've been fighting hard for that today. Especially in the fourth heat, we definitely gave it all. We fought hard and thus really earned the silver,” Kuske said.

Meanwhile, the Americans celebrated their landmark gold that capped a season where Holcomb finished atop the World Cup four-man overall standings.
“It's incredible. We've been working so hard the last four years and it's finally paid off,” Holcomb said. “I saw this gold medal all the way back in 1994. That's when I really knew I wanted an Olympic gold medal.”

Canada's Pierre Lueders, the five-time Olympian, climbed one spot from Friday's (Feb. 26) sixth-place seat to finish fifth overall. Lueders, whose team experienced some tough times and stressful delays after two of the six sleds that crashed yesterday did so right before the runs of the Canada-2 sled, posted the fifth- and fourth-best times in the final two runs to improve his overall standing.

“We just knew we had to put some pressure on the German and found a couple hundredths at the bottom, but fourth or fifth, I'm not really too worried about that. For an older guy like myself, to compete at home during the Olympics, it's unbelievable,” Lueders said, relishing the screaming and flag-waving crowds that greeted all the sliders at the finish dock.

Tuffy Latour, head coach of the Canadian bobsleigh team, hailed the results of his athletes – including the two medals for the women, Rush's bronze and the two fifth-place finishes by Lueders – as a huge accomplishment for the program, particularly since they won the same amount of bobsleigh medals as the powerhouse Germans.

“It's a huge Olympics for us, this just really tops it off,” Latour said. He showed no disappointment about finishing one hundredth of a second behind Lange, whom Rush's teammates call “the Great One.”

“We'll take that, that's a good day,” the coach said.