Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Another U.S. Olympic sprinter turns to bobsled

Ryan Bailey

NASSAU, BAHAMAS - MAY 02: Justin Gatlin, Ryan Bailey, Tyson Gay, and Mike Rodgers of the United States stand on the podium after winning the final of the men’s 4 x 100 metres on day one of the IAAF World Relays at Thomas Robinson Stadium on May 2, 2015 in Nassau, Bahamas. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images for IAAF)

Getty Images for IAAF

Ryan Bailey, who finished fifth in the London Olympic 100m and anchored the 2012 U.S. 4x100m relay team, is the latest sprinter to transition to bobsled.

Bailey “set the bar” in combine tests ahead of Saturday’s U.S. push championships for prospective push athletes on two- and four-man bobsleds, according to U.S. Bobsled.

Bailey, 31, missed the 2016 U.S. Olympic team, slowed by a hamstring injury at the Trials in July.

If Bailey makes it onto the national bobsled team, he would be following recent U.S. Olympic women’s sprinters.

Lauryn Williams, the 2004 Olympic 100m silver medalist, and Lolo Jones, a two-time Olympic 100m hurdler, were push athletes at the Sochi Olympics as the ninth and 10th Americans to make Summer and Winter Olympic teams.

Other track athletes -- sprinter Tianna Bartoletta and heptathlete Hyleas Fountain -- also made brief forays into bobsled after the 2012 London Olympics.

The most notable recent male track and field Olympians to try bobsled were 1980s stars Edwin Moses and Renaldo Nehemiah, but neither made it all the way to the Winter Games.

The last male Summer Olympian to make a U.S. Olympic bobsled team was 1968 Olympic 110m hurdles champion Willie Davenport, who finished 12th in the four-man bobsled at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games.

Davenport is the most recent American man to make Summer and Winter Olympic teams.

The World Cup bobsled season starts in late November.

MORE: Steven Holcomb reacts to Russia bobsled doping report

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJbMlaljE07/